Showing posts with label democracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label democracy. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
The Republicans Have Already Lost; or, Barry Goldwater All Over Again
Willard Romney, Incorporated was already losing in the political polls. Then on Saturday the 11th, he made what he thought was the winningest pick for vice president: Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.
Romney-Ryan has already lost. Here's why.
In 1964, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona ran his Republican presidential campaign on a more or less ideologically pure platform and got his butt handed to him by President Lyndon Johnson, who proceeded to sign the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.
Paul Ryan is the architect of this year's GOP platform. His plan ends Medicare, privatizes Social Security, raises taxes on the middle class and the poor, and all but subsidizes the rich. He justifies this with Ayn Rand's ethics, which states that the big industrialists are the true producers and everybody else is a mooching looter and moral cannibal living off their totally deserved wealth. The not-so-hidden assumptions are "vulgar Calvinism", the belief that wealth is the mark of virtue or is itself virtue, and Social Darwinism, the cult of "the survival of the fittest" — combined in the assumption that the rich are the fittest and the poor are the unfit that must be destroyed.
Seems the Corporates have not evolved one bit since they tried to destroy President Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression. Hell, some of them even supported Hitler in his Kampf or jihad against America. America is evolving and changing around them, yet they haven't changed one bit. Wealth and power can be very regressive forces indeed.
Ryan's plan to destroy Medicare and sell off Social Security to his predatory Corporate friends will lose him the senior vote that the GOP previously relied on as the core of their base. It's even threatening the GOP down-ticket: Ryan is now every GOP politician's running mate, since he wrote the party platform he's now running on as VP nominee.
There are two potential Ralph Nader/Ross Perot-type spoilers. First, there's the Libertarian Party, whose nominee Gary Johnson is running on essentially the Ron Paul platform. He will siphon away at least a significant proportion of Paul supporters from Romney-Ryan. The other is the second biggest third party, Dominionist party variously called Constitution, Independence, and American Taxpayers. If they can nominate a top ticket with a high enough profile, they could take away a good chunk of the Religious Right.
The platform Romney and Ryan are running on is essentially Corporatism, an ideology with little mass appeal precisely because it scorns the masses. Its current basis is Ayn Rand's ideology of Objectivism, which is basically Stalinism turned upside down: she replaced Marxism's revolutionary proletariat with a revolutionary bourgeoisie, and replaced Christian and Marxist altruism (the ethics of self-sacrifice) with an equally extreme egoism. Now combine this disadvantage with the threat of two competing right-wing third parties. The result? A second term for President Barack Obama, the guy the Right hates because the Great White Father isn't supposed to be black.
Note that I never mentioned the Democratic Party once in the above paragraphs. Democratic Presidents, yes, but not the party. That's because, as I've been saying since last year, this election is the Republicans' to lose. Now I'm convince that they've already lost it.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
His Name Was Willard Romney, Incorporated
When F. Scott Fitzgerald began one of his novels with the statement “The rich are different from you and I,” he wasn’t talking about mere cash flow, but worldview. Willard Mitt Romney, the Overclass’ designated robocandidate, exemplifies that worldview so central-casting perfectly that it’s not even funny. Now that he’s won the Republican Party nomination for President, everyone is about to find out how.
First, a relevant digression. In his cyberpunk short story “Sunken Gardens,” Bruce Sterling introduces the story’s dominant character (not the main character, a near-nonentity) with this sentence: “Her name was Arkadya Sorienti, Incorporated.” Later he repeatedly refers to her as “The Sorienti.” And of course I “homaged” that notation to refer to my High Corporate villains in Chaos Angel Spanner.
Willard Mitt Romney is the very archetype of the High Corporate aristocrat. He’s slick, soulless, and robotic to the point of activating the “uncanny valley” response in actual humans. He drips with contempt for the “inferior” orders. He’s a “vulture capitalist” who specializes in destroying American businesses and jobs. He’s on record as saying that inheriting great wealth is equivalent to inheriting great looks or talent, in denial of all the evidence which shows that inheriting great wealth sucks away all talent and personality. He shares his caste’s delusion that being rich means being genetically superior by definition. His goal is that of his caste: to abolish democracy worldwide and establish the global dictatorship of American Corporatism.
A candidate so stuck up, so cluelessly arrogant, would have to be a bottomless fount of campaign-destroying gaffes of the caliber of Carly Fiorina’s demon sheep. So Romney. There’s the dog-atop-the-car incident that has pet lovers hissing and growling. There’s the time he publicly confessed he enjoys firing people — and it’s not just firing yard work contractors; it’s firing people, period, that turns him on, or he wouldn’t have made it his life’s work. There’s how he gets testy with angry poor people and talks down to them. There’s how he looks so artificial that people have taken to calling him a robot (e.g. RomBot) and a zombie (Zomney). And the gaffes will not stop. They cannot stop because Romney completely lacks the ability to connect with people below his own aristocratic caste.
Last year, surveying the much broader field of Republican candidates in what had already turned into a tawdry reality show by the time The Donald briefly entered the race on a “birther” platform, I predicted (privately and on Twitter) that even though there’s no way Obama, unmasked as a Nixonite conservative, could win the 2012 presidential election, the Republicans would find a way to lose it. As it turned out, they found several: Trump, the pizza man and his Sim City tax plan, the crazy lady, the debate reality show, Newt’s ego, Santorum’s sanctimony, the replacement of democracy with corporate fascism, tax cuts for the rich and tax war against the poor, and a relentless war not just on workers but women. The Gang Of Plunderers are certain that they are invincible because God and infinite wealth are on their side. The triumphalism of their 2010 victory has made them arrogant enough to make Ayn Rand look humble. Spitting on your constituents on behalf of your corporate owners is not a recipe for electoral victory.
The primary-ending duel between Romney and Rick “the Preacher” Santorum made me realize another thing. Santorum, of course, lost. There are a lot of poor people in the Christian Right, and they voted for Santorum. If I were to bet money, I’d bet big money that the Christian Right will defect from the Rich Man’s Party and vote for the candidate of the party that claims them as its own, called by various names (here in Washington state, the Constitution Party; Independence Party elsewhere). It should be clear by now to the theocratic reactionaries that the GOP worship another god as the Supreme Being, not Jehovah but Mammon, god of money. Between liberal anticorporatism, religious conservative revulsion (and not just because he’s Mormon), and, well, just being a robot or reptoid masquerading as human, Romney looks to be even more the sure loser than fellow flipflopper John Kerry was in 2004. The Republicans are well on their way to losing.
His name is Willard Romney, Incorporated. Pass it on.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
As New York Legalizes Gay Marriage...
There's a reason I separated this opinion blog from my main blog. It's because I link that one to Facebook. Most of my Facebook friends are relatives. Half of them (my late father's side) are born-again Christians. I am happy that the state of New York just legalized same-sex marriage. They aren't. This blog is not for them.
After a long dry spell, the legislature of the third biggest state in the Union extended full marriage rights to same-sex couples. This is a major development in the continuing struggle. There is no danger that the law will be repealed because: one, New York has no initiative process that religious opponents can use to repeal it with; two; since a Democratic-dominated legislature shot down the first attempt two years ago, opposition has collapsed to the point where a Republican-dominated legislature approved it.
The next challenge will be in liberal states with an initiative process, particularly the three on the West Coast. Previously, direct democracy was still conservative on the issue of same-sex marriage, as witness Proposition 8 in California in 2008. Can same-sex marriage rights prevail at the ballot in 2012 in states like California and Washington? I'd say my own state (Washington) is already ahead on it because it's a civil-unions state. It's also behind because it has a "Defense of Marriage Act" on the law books, and it needs to be repealed. That's what any marriage-rights initiative will have to do. You know I'll be voting for the marriage-rights initiative as soon as my ballot comes in the mail.
The struggle continues...
After a long dry spell, the legislature of the third biggest state in the Union extended full marriage rights to same-sex couples. This is a major development in the continuing struggle. There is no danger that the law will be repealed because: one, New York has no initiative process that religious opponents can use to repeal it with; two; since a Democratic-dominated legislature shot down the first attempt two years ago, opposition has collapsed to the point where a Republican-dominated legislature approved it.
The next challenge will be in liberal states with an initiative process, particularly the three on the West Coast. Previously, direct democracy was still conservative on the issue of same-sex marriage, as witness Proposition 8 in California in 2008. Can same-sex marriage rights prevail at the ballot in 2012 in states like California and Washington? I'd say my own state (Washington) is already ahead on it because it's a civil-unions state. It's also behind because it has a "Defense of Marriage Act" on the law books, and it needs to be repealed. That's what any marriage-rights initiative will have to do. You know I'll be voting for the marriage-rights initiative as soon as my ballot comes in the mail.
The struggle continues...
Monday, June 20, 2011
A Belated Postmortem of the 2010 Election: In Which I Temporarily Eat My Words
I think the 2010 election was a bit traumatic for non-conservatives like me, to say the least. That's why I'm writing about it right now, instead of right after the disaster happened.
The problems: One, the Republican Party has gone so far to the right that I vowed never to vote for them again (except for Ron Paul, of course) years ago. Two, the Republicans swept the election, big time. The Democrats got their butts handed to them.
So what happened? Basically, when the candidate of hope and change actually became president, he proved to be more conservative than the people who elected him. Barack Obama even turned out to be more conservative than Richard Nixon, of all people. Since few American politicians seem to remember Nixon, let's give a bit of context here: Nixon, for all his professed conservatism, was responsible for the kind of socialist policies Obama refuses to touch with the proverbial ten-foot pole, such as "affirmative action" a.k.a race quotas and — believe it or not — price controls. Any TEA Party Republican who claims that Obama is the "most socialist president ever" doesn't know Nixon, or Eisenhower for that matter (Interstate Highway System, among other unforgivable acts of socialism). "Most socialist president ever" is really code for "that black guy who had the gall to become Great White Father".
So Barack Obama, the desperate liberals' Great Black Hope, turned out to be a Clintonite Blue Dog conservative who clings to Bush-era neofascist policies starting with the imperial wars. So, in the mid-term election, the angry young liberals stayed home in droves, allowing the angry old conservatives to carry the election. The TEA Party claims the American People gave it a mandate. So what do they do? Impose corporatist dictatorship wherever it holds power.
I predicted the Democrats' losses would be minimal in 2010. I never figured on the Democratic liberal and antiwar base turning against President Obama. That's why I'm eating my words. I'm temporarily eating my words because the way the Republicans are acting — that is, like the arrogant ruling party of a one-party dictatorship — 2012 is theirs to lose, and they will lose it. They've already given the Democrats more than enough rope with which to hang them. And if Michele Bachmann wins the GOP nomination, consider them already beaten. But if Jon Huntsman wins — he's the former Utah governor who was Obama's ambassador to China — his former boss will get a real contest, precisely because Huntsman is not as extreme as the TEA Party wants.
Stay tuned...
The problems: One, the Republican Party has gone so far to the right that I vowed never to vote for them again (except for Ron Paul, of course) years ago. Two, the Republicans swept the election, big time. The Democrats got their butts handed to them.
So what happened? Basically, when the candidate of hope and change actually became president, he proved to be more conservative than the people who elected him. Barack Obama even turned out to be more conservative than Richard Nixon, of all people. Since few American politicians seem to remember Nixon, let's give a bit of context here: Nixon, for all his professed conservatism, was responsible for the kind of socialist policies Obama refuses to touch with the proverbial ten-foot pole, such as "affirmative action" a.k.a race quotas and — believe it or not — price controls. Any TEA Party Republican who claims that Obama is the "most socialist president ever" doesn't know Nixon, or Eisenhower for that matter (Interstate Highway System, among other unforgivable acts of socialism). "Most socialist president ever" is really code for "that black guy who had the gall to become Great White Father".
So Barack Obama, the desperate liberals' Great Black Hope, turned out to be a Clintonite Blue Dog conservative who clings to Bush-era neofascist policies starting with the imperial wars. So, in the mid-term election, the angry young liberals stayed home in droves, allowing the angry old conservatives to carry the election. The TEA Party claims the American People gave it a mandate. So what do they do? Impose corporatist dictatorship wherever it holds power.
I predicted the Democrats' losses would be minimal in 2010. I never figured on the Democratic liberal and antiwar base turning against President Obama. That's why I'm eating my words. I'm temporarily eating my words because the way the Republicans are acting — that is, like the arrogant ruling party of a one-party dictatorship — 2012 is theirs to lose, and they will lose it. They've already given the Democrats more than enough rope with which to hang them. And if Michele Bachmann wins the GOP nomination, consider them already beaten. But if Jon Huntsman wins — he's the former Utah governor who was Obama's ambassador to China — his former boss will get a real contest, precisely because Huntsman is not as extreme as the TEA Party wants.
Stay tuned...
Friday, February 18, 2011
The #revo11ution Comes to America
That wave of revolutions sweeping the Middle East? It didn't stop there. The revolution that started with the toppling of America's Soviet-style satellites, the oil plantations of the Middle East, has come to the homeland at last! It started, interestingly enough, in Wisconsin.
The Republican governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, has declared war on the civil service unions. He wants to strip them of all collective bargaining rights. Needless to say, in the Midwest's great stronghold of Populism, his action has provoked massive protests in Madison and Milwaukee. Cairo has come to Wisconsin.
What he's doing, of course, is good old-fashioned union busting, what the Robber Barons of Gilded Age I did in the late 19th century. Like them, he intends to call in the National Guard to crack down hard on the protests. If the National Guard doesn't work, he will likely attempt the Robber Barons' other solution: call in the mercenary enforcers: Pinkerton back then, Blackwater today.
Here's Walker's scheme:
Way to go, Governor.
Now witness the TEA Party. What are they doing? Heeding the siren song of the Fox News propaganda machine and rushing to Madison to support Governor Walker! You know what this looks like: the pro-Mubarak counterdemonstrators who rushed the protesters in Liberation Square, on foot and on camelback, and attacked — at precisely 2:15 in the afternoon. I suspected the TEA Party would be their American counterpart. Now we have absolute proof.
Meanwhile, the Egyptian workers are calling for the resignation of all those corrupt union leaders who were in bed with Mubarak. American workers should do the same; after all, the union brass here are in bed with the Wall Street bankster oligarchy.
The 2011 Revolution continues, and the empire of Corporatism had better watch out...
EDIT: Ole Ole Olson at News Junkie Post debunks the TEA Party's defense of Walker here.
The Republican governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, has declared war on the civil service unions. He wants to strip them of all collective bargaining rights. Needless to say, in the Midwest's great stronghold of Populism, his action has provoked massive protests in Madison and Milwaukee. Cairo has come to Wisconsin.
What he's doing, of course, is good old-fashioned union busting, what the Robber Barons of Gilded Age I did in the late 19th century. Like them, he intends to call in the National Guard to crack down hard on the protests. If the National Guard doesn't work, he will likely attempt the Robber Barons' other solution: call in the mercenary enforcers: Pinkerton back then, Blackwater today.
Here's Walker's scheme:
- Give massive tax cuts to giant corporations and ultra-rich corporate welfare kings.
- Fudge the numbers, the same way the Conservative Book Club games the bestseller lists, to make it look like there's a huge deficit.
- Blame the public sector unions, call in the enforcers and the
PravdaFox News propaganda machine, and SMASH!
Way to go, Governor.
Now witness the TEA Party. What are they doing? Heeding the siren song of the Fox News propaganda machine and rushing to Madison to support Governor Walker! You know what this looks like: the pro-Mubarak counterdemonstrators who rushed the protesters in Liberation Square, on foot and on camelback, and attacked — at precisely 2:15 in the afternoon. I suspected the TEA Party would be their American counterpart. Now we have absolute proof.
Meanwhile, the Egyptian workers are calling for the resignation of all those corrupt union leaders who were in bed with Mubarak. American workers should do the same; after all, the union brass here are in bed with the Wall Street bankster oligarchy.
The 2011 Revolution continues, and the empire of Corporatism had better watch out...
EDIT: Ole Ole Olson at News Junkie Post debunks the TEA Party's defense of Walker here.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Wikileaks: World Infowar I
The article: WikiLeaks: Winning the Info War Despite Assange's Arrest (Time)
Since I posted last, Julian Assange has been arrested. Wikileaks' original sites, hosts, and funding sources have been ripped away from them by an enraged American imperial government. The government and the "lamestream" corporate media have lined up behind Sarah Palin and Bill O'Reilly in calling for Assange's head on a platter, preferably bloody, with his mangled corpse paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue in a Roman-style military triumph.
The outcome is already clear to see. Wikileaks is already winning.
The hacker underground's anarchist statement of faith is: Information wants to be free. Sure enough, faced with an escalating worldwide US government crackdown, the Internet is striking back. Wikileaks may not have a host anymore, but it now has over 500 mirror sites, and the number will only grow. The guerrilla hacker group Anonymous are attacking the online operations of corporations complying with the crackdown using denial of service attacks just like the one the US government attacked Wikileaks itself with before the Cablegate release. It's no longer the American Empire against one pesky leaker of government secrets. It's now the American Empire against the entire hacker underground. To them, Julian Assange is a hero. And now he is also a martyr. His arrest may well be his "Martin Luther King in Birmingham Jail" moment.
If you're trying to defeat an enemy, the worst thing you can do is turn him into a martyr. The US did just this to a psychopath named Osama bin Laden by invading Iraq in order to steal its oil for America's oilman elite. Now they've done this to Assange, making him the David to America's Goliath.
When he was president, American revolutionary John Adams declared that America did not go out looking for monsters to fight. Today, America exists for no other reason than to fight monsters, and even mass produces them in order to fight them. Many vested interests and infinite profits depend on this. The war between the US and Wikileaks was not only necessary, it was inevitable.
For the first time, the decentralizing force of the Internet is beginning to show its full power. The ancient tradition of government, even "democratic", is military-based command and control, in which the people know their place and the rulers make sure they stay there. The Internet, on the other hand, was purposely designed to be decentralized; in the ultimate irony, the US military insisted on creating it that way, so that it could withstand a Soviet nuclear attack, during the Cold War. For security reasons, the Internet is structured to avoid what is called a single point of vulnerability. In a system with such a vulnerability, take out that single point and you take out the whole system with it. But if the system is completely decentralized, it becomes extremely difficult to destroy, if not impossible. Redundancy is security in cyberspace.
Now that Julian Assange is in jail and the original Wikileaks site is permanently down by American decree, the single point of vulnerability is now gone. 500+ hackers' mirror sites can't be taken down so easily. The Empire now faces a far more protean foe, one increasingly determined to bring the entire corporatist system down. The American rulers still think they can pull a Tiananmen and crush the revolt. The anarchists who saved Wikileaks are instead working to inflict on the ailing Empire the fate of another seemingly invincible Communist despotism: the collapse of the Soviet Union.
It's more than just a clash between an angry empire and an empowered rebel underground. For the first time, the traditional world system is facing its successor. America is now fighting the future. But now a growing international revolt is fighting for the future. And yes, believe it or not, I can even quote Ayn Rand on this:
Since I posted last, Julian Assange has been arrested. Wikileaks' original sites, hosts, and funding sources have been ripped away from them by an enraged American imperial government. The government and the "lamestream" corporate media have lined up behind Sarah Palin and Bill O'Reilly in calling for Assange's head on a platter, preferably bloody, with his mangled corpse paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue in a Roman-style military triumph.
The outcome is already clear to see. Wikileaks is already winning.
The hacker underground's anarchist statement of faith is: Information wants to be free. Sure enough, faced with an escalating worldwide US government crackdown, the Internet is striking back. Wikileaks may not have a host anymore, but it now has over 500 mirror sites, and the number will only grow. The guerrilla hacker group Anonymous are attacking the online operations of corporations complying with the crackdown using denial of service attacks just like the one the US government attacked Wikileaks itself with before the Cablegate release. It's no longer the American Empire against one pesky leaker of government secrets. It's now the American Empire against the entire hacker underground. To them, Julian Assange is a hero. And now he is also a martyr. His arrest may well be his "Martin Luther King in Birmingham Jail" moment.
If you're trying to defeat an enemy, the worst thing you can do is turn him into a martyr. The US did just this to a psychopath named Osama bin Laden by invading Iraq in order to steal its oil for America's oilman elite. Now they've done this to Assange, making him the David to America's Goliath.
When he was president, American revolutionary John Adams declared that America did not go out looking for monsters to fight. Today, America exists for no other reason than to fight monsters, and even mass produces them in order to fight them. Many vested interests and infinite profits depend on this. The war between the US and Wikileaks was not only necessary, it was inevitable.
For the first time, the decentralizing force of the Internet is beginning to show its full power. The ancient tradition of government, even "democratic", is military-based command and control, in which the people know their place and the rulers make sure they stay there. The Internet, on the other hand, was purposely designed to be decentralized; in the ultimate irony, the US military insisted on creating it that way, so that it could withstand a Soviet nuclear attack, during the Cold War. For security reasons, the Internet is structured to avoid what is called a single point of vulnerability. In a system with such a vulnerability, take out that single point and you take out the whole system with it. But if the system is completely decentralized, it becomes extremely difficult to destroy, if not impossible. Redundancy is security in cyberspace.
Now that Julian Assange is in jail and the original Wikileaks site is permanently down by American decree, the single point of vulnerability is now gone. 500+ hackers' mirror sites can't be taken down so easily. The Empire now faces a far more protean foe, one increasingly determined to bring the entire corporatist system down. The American rulers still think they can pull a Tiananmen and crush the revolt. The anarchists who saved Wikileaks are instead working to inflict on the ailing Empire the fate of another seemingly invincible Communist despotism: the collapse of the Soviet Union.
It's more than just a clash between an angry empire and an empowered rebel underground. For the first time, the traditional world system is facing its successor. America is now fighting the future. But now a growing international revolt is fighting for the future. And yes, believe it or not, I can even quote Ayn Rand on this:
"Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today."
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Obama's Neocon Turn Makes A Peace Movement Possible Again
The article: Is a Peace Movement Finally Awakening? by Sheldon Richman of the Future of Freedom Foundation
We know what the New Right is all about: corporate socialism. They call it Big Government Conservatism, and it consists of corporate welfare at home, imperial expansion abroad, and a national security state powered by religious fanaticism worthy of Al-Qaeda. The liberal Left, however, was all but defanged by the election of a black president who talked the liberal talk. But now we know that he walks the neocon walk. Liberals are actually starting to come out of their closets and protest again.
Guess what this means? Now that the Great Black Hope has proved to be just another tyrannical Great White Father, a left-wing peace movement has become possible once again. We antiwar libertarians are starting to believe we won't be so lonely for long.
Where liberals and libertarians part, of course, is in their opinion of government. Liberals, descending from the social democrats of the 19th and 20th centuries, believe that government can be used as a force for good, a weapon against the oppression of the masses. Libertarians are far more cynical: expansion of government welfare leads inevitably to the supreme corporate welfare of war and empire, or the other way around if the empire wants to buy the masses' loyalty. The supreme statement of the libertarian position comes from early 20th century libertarian Randolph Bourne: "War is the health of the state."
But now Obama has shown his true colors. He is indeed bent on destroying America — but on behalf of his real owners: the banksters who lead the New Right and fund the TEA Party. He sold us a bill of goods, you see. The liberals are now a constituency without representation. Some of them are beginning to complain. As the war between the US and Wikileaks escalates, and as an increasingly frustrated US government threatens to abolish freedom of speech and unleash Soviet-style secret police tactics in order to defend the empire and its war policy, they may actually start to realize they may have to take to the streets again, perhaps all the way to the barricades.
But until then, antiwar libertarians and socialists will remain the proverbial prophets crying out in the wilderness...
We know what the New Right is all about: corporate socialism. They call it Big Government Conservatism, and it consists of corporate welfare at home, imperial expansion abroad, and a national security state powered by religious fanaticism worthy of Al-Qaeda. The liberal Left, however, was all but defanged by the election of a black president who talked the liberal talk. But now we know that he walks the neocon walk. Liberals are actually starting to come out of their closets and protest again.
Guess what this means? Now that the Great Black Hope has proved to be just another tyrannical Great White Father, a left-wing peace movement has become possible once again. We antiwar libertarians are starting to believe we won't be so lonely for long.
Where liberals and libertarians part, of course, is in their opinion of government. Liberals, descending from the social democrats of the 19th and 20th centuries, believe that government can be used as a force for good, a weapon against the oppression of the masses. Libertarians are far more cynical: expansion of government welfare leads inevitably to the supreme corporate welfare of war and empire, or the other way around if the empire wants to buy the masses' loyalty. The supreme statement of the libertarian position comes from early 20th century libertarian Randolph Bourne: "War is the health of the state."
But now Obama has shown his true colors. He is indeed bent on destroying America — but on behalf of his real owners: the banksters who lead the New Right and fund the TEA Party. He sold us a bill of goods, you see. The liberals are now a constituency without representation. Some of them are beginning to complain. As the war between the US and Wikileaks escalates, and as an increasingly frustrated US government threatens to abolish freedom of speech and unleash Soviet-style secret police tactics in order to defend the empire and its war policy, they may actually start to realize they may have to take to the streets again, perhaps all the way to the barricades.
But until then, antiwar libertarians and socialists will remain the proverbial prophets crying out in the wilderness...
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Barack Obama Jumps the Shark
The article: Obama Channels Reagan, and Risks Becoming Carter
Remember when I said, before the election catastrophe, that Rand Paul was over? Well, allow me to eat my words: he's not. In fact, he won. There can be only one reason why Rand Paul is not over:
Barack Obama is.
This time, he's gone too far. He's extended Bush's disastrous tax cuts for the rich! And without spending cuts to compensate. You know, Big Government Conservatism. Remember voodoo economics, the religion of Wall Street? You know, the magical thinking that claims tax cuts for the rich without spending cuts will cut deficits? He's now its most ardent acolyte. He's now defending his support of the Republican agenda against the liberal base that elected him. The people who voted for hope and change in 2008 are now every bit as unrepresented as the British colonials who started the American Revolution.
Even earlier, not long after he rode the wave of hope and change into office, he betrayed the millions of actual liberals who voted him into the White House by going to West Poing to announce a George W. Bush surge in the Afghan war. This war, like any other colonial war against the Middle East, has never been for the purpose of preserving freedom. Its only purpose is profit for the corporate welfare kings, particularly the oil barons and war profiteers. That's when he strangled all his beautiful promises in the crib, promises he never had any intention of ever keeping.
Now the man the TEA Party thinks is a Kenyan-born agent of Osama bin Laden has completed his transformation into a neocon. Yes, he is determined to destroy America. But with enemies like Obama, do Al-Qaeda even need friends? His plan for the destruction of America was written by America's corporate owners on Wall Street and their agents in the Republican Party. This is the beginning of the end of Obama's one and only term as president, for he has now definitively jumped the shark. Only the neocons are left in government now. There is only one party left, the party of corporatism and empire. The US government does not belong to the people, and never has; it is democratic only in theory, but oligarchic in design. Today, America is not its people but its corporations.
Obama's failure is the failure of the Democratic Party. The Republicans may be at each other's throats to the point that it threatens to split in two; but it's the Democratic party that's collapsing. The Democrats are an echo of the Republicans. An echo, not a choice. If the GOP is the Evil Party in the 1 1/2-party system that H.L. Mencken described almost a century ago, then the Dems can only be the Stupid Party.
No wonder they got clobbered by the TEA Party reactionaries in the '10 election! But said rebels are also signalling their eagerness to sell out to our corporate slavemasters. They shouldn't expect to be immune from the populist backlash, either, when the reckoning comes in two years.
I tell you, it's going to get ugly come 2012. Watch the Democratic primary. And don't bet on the incumbent winning it.
Back to Take Nothing On Faith...
Remember when I said, before the election catastrophe, that Rand Paul was over? Well, allow me to eat my words: he's not. In fact, he won. There can be only one reason why Rand Paul is not over:
Barack Obama is.
This time, he's gone too far. He's extended Bush's disastrous tax cuts for the rich! And without spending cuts to compensate. You know, Big Government Conservatism. Remember voodoo economics, the religion of Wall Street? You know, the magical thinking that claims tax cuts for the rich without spending cuts will cut deficits? He's now its most ardent acolyte. He's now defending his support of the Republican agenda against the liberal base that elected him. The people who voted for hope and change in 2008 are now every bit as unrepresented as the British colonials who started the American Revolution.
Even earlier, not long after he rode the wave of hope and change into office, he betrayed the millions of actual liberals who voted him into the White House by going to West Poing to announce a George W. Bush surge in the Afghan war. This war, like any other colonial war against the Middle East, has never been for the purpose of preserving freedom. Its only purpose is profit for the corporate welfare kings, particularly the oil barons and war profiteers. That's when he strangled all his beautiful promises in the crib, promises he never had any intention of ever keeping.
Now the man the TEA Party thinks is a Kenyan-born agent of Osama bin Laden has completed his transformation into a neocon. Yes, he is determined to destroy America. But with enemies like Obama, do Al-Qaeda even need friends? His plan for the destruction of America was written by America's corporate owners on Wall Street and their agents in the Republican Party. This is the beginning of the end of Obama's one and only term as president, for he has now definitively jumped the shark. Only the neocons are left in government now. There is only one party left, the party of corporatism and empire. The US government does not belong to the people, and never has; it is democratic only in theory, but oligarchic in design. Today, America is not its people but its corporations.
Obama's failure is the failure of the Democratic Party. The Republicans may be at each other's throats to the point that it threatens to split in two; but it's the Democratic party that's collapsing. The Democrats are an echo of the Republicans. An echo, not a choice. If the GOP is the Evil Party in the 1 1/2-party system that H.L. Mencken described almost a century ago, then the Dems can only be the Stupid Party.
No wonder they got clobbered by the TEA Party reactionaries in the '10 election! But said rebels are also signalling their eagerness to sell out to our corporate slavemasters. They shouldn't expect to be immune from the populist backlash, either, when the reckoning comes in two years.
I tell you, it's going to get ugly come 2012. Watch the Democratic primary. And don't bet on the incumbent winning it.
Back to Take Nothing On Faith...
Saturday, December 19, 2009
It's Official: No, Obama Can't, And He Never Wanted To Anyway
The articles:
- Tom Sullivan: President Obama Loses His Base: He Just Ran Out of Slack
- Glenn Greenwald: White House as helpless victim on healthcare and The underlying divisions in the healthcare debate
- Matt Taibbi: Obama's Big Sellout
- David Sirota: The "Candidate vs. President" Canard
- Barack Obama is not a progressive.
- Barack Obama is a bought and paid-for conservative Clintonite corporate shill who is selling out American democracy to corporatist dictatorship.
- Barack Obama has officially jumped the shark.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
The Oligarchic American Constitution
The official spin is that America is a democracy. It's a crucial part of the national mythology. Well, guess what: This is nowhere near the truth. The Founders never said they were setting up a democracy. In fact, in The Federalist, three of them argued repeatedly against democracy. The republic the Framers set up with their 1787 Constitution was intended to be an electoral oligarchy. What else would you expect from a constitution that originally gave slavemasters extra votes representing 3/5 of each of their slaves?
On the other hand, there is a lot of democracy below the federal level: in most states and localities, direct democracy has been implemented in the form of initiative, referendum, and recall. It's not quite as participatory as the Athenian assembly, in which all the citizens met every month or week to do what legislatures and city councils do today, but it's actually far more democratic than the US federal government, which restricts democratic participation to electing a limited number of officials and was far more restrictive in its unamended original version.
Naturally, there's a huge contradiction that is undermining the entire creaky 18th-century American system. On the one hand, you have the oligarchic federal government which has over the decades become increasingly monarchic. On the other, there's the long-term trend toward democratization which has led to the universal right to vote and to expanding civil rights for women, racial minorities, gays and lesbians, and immigrants among others. The democratic trend also involves the expansion of the vote until now all adult citizens can vote, where originally only propertied white males were eligible. Increasingly, these two opposite trends are working against each other. Eventually they will not be able to coexist, and one or the other must prevail at the other's expense. At that time, a revolution will be highly likely. That time will be when the colonial conquest campaign in the Middle East is lost and the troops come home.
The 1787 Constitution is obsolete. There might be a way to save it: state nullification, the right of any one state to veto or nullify any federal law, regulation, and decree. Thomas Jefferson himself came up with that, and insisted that it was the only thing that would ultimately prevent the American republic from degenerating into a tyranny. Now would be a good time to revive the idea. It would make an excellent 28th Amendment. Otherwise, it would be a good idea to scrap the dysfunctional federal system entirely, and replace the current 1787 Constitution with something at least as good at protecting rights but far more democratic.
The problem with an oligarchic constitution, you see, is that an oligarchy ultimately loses touch with the mass of ordinary citizens. Oligarchs are unaccountable to the people. Increasingly drunk on power, they lose touch with reality as well. In the democratic age, good government requires the rulers to be accountable to the citizens, or they will rule arbitrarily and tyrannically. So a modern constitution must make the government accountable. That means democracy in some form. Some critics of the current constitution advocate a European-style parliamentary system elected through proportional representation instead of the current setup. What was originally the equality of the executive and legislative branches has degenerated into the monarchic supremacy of the executive, or "Imperial Presidency". European-style parliaments subordinate the executive (usually called a "prime minster") to the legislature. This may be more workable. However, it still proves oligarchic in practice if it doesn't have at least some features of direct democracy (initiative, referendum, recall, nullification). But we won't know what we'll come up with till the revolution begins and the Fourth Republic is born.
On the other hand, there is a lot of democracy below the federal level: in most states and localities, direct democracy has been implemented in the form of initiative, referendum, and recall. It's not quite as participatory as the Athenian assembly, in which all the citizens met every month or week to do what legislatures and city councils do today, but it's actually far more democratic than the US federal government, which restricts democratic participation to electing a limited number of officials and was far more restrictive in its unamended original version.
Naturally, there's a huge contradiction that is undermining the entire creaky 18th-century American system. On the one hand, you have the oligarchic federal government which has over the decades become increasingly monarchic. On the other, there's the long-term trend toward democratization which has led to the universal right to vote and to expanding civil rights for women, racial minorities, gays and lesbians, and immigrants among others. The democratic trend also involves the expansion of the vote until now all adult citizens can vote, where originally only propertied white males were eligible. Increasingly, these two opposite trends are working against each other. Eventually they will not be able to coexist, and one or the other must prevail at the other's expense. At that time, a revolution will be highly likely. That time will be when the colonial conquest campaign in the Middle East is lost and the troops come home.
The 1787 Constitution is obsolete. There might be a way to save it: state nullification, the right of any one state to veto or nullify any federal law, regulation, and decree. Thomas Jefferson himself came up with that, and insisted that it was the only thing that would ultimately prevent the American republic from degenerating into a tyranny. Now would be a good time to revive the idea. It would make an excellent 28th Amendment. Otherwise, it would be a good idea to scrap the dysfunctional federal system entirely, and replace the current 1787 Constitution with something at least as good at protecting rights but far more democratic.
The problem with an oligarchic constitution, you see, is that an oligarchy ultimately loses touch with the mass of ordinary citizens. Oligarchs are unaccountable to the people. Increasingly drunk on power, they lose touch with reality as well. In the democratic age, good government requires the rulers to be accountable to the citizens, or they will rule arbitrarily and tyrannically. So a modern constitution must make the government accountable. That means democracy in some form. Some critics of the current constitution advocate a European-style parliamentary system elected through proportional representation instead of the current setup. What was originally the equality of the executive and legislative branches has degenerated into the monarchic supremacy of the executive, or "Imperial Presidency". European-style parliaments subordinate the executive (usually called a "prime minster") to the legislature. This may be more workable. However, it still proves oligarchic in practice if it doesn't have at least some features of direct democracy (initiative, referendum, recall, nullification). But we won't know what we'll come up with till the revolution begins and the Fourth Republic is born.
Monday, June 2, 2008
The Third American Republic
Now let's talk history for once. Sometimes I speak of "the Third American Republic", numbering American republics like French ones. I have to explain it to most people. Some historians and pundits measure it differently, but in fact the periods of independent American history fall into three periods which can rightly be called republics:
One hallmark of the current Third Republic is a presidency far stronger than in any previous American republic. In fact, right now the presidency is being transformed into something of an elective absolute monarchy. Another is our not quite so laissez-faire form of capitalism in which corporations are defined as "legal persons" which in practice gives them greater rights than mere puny humans; right now, this is transforming into a full-blown state capitalism.
Counter to trends like these is the growing trend toward full civil rights for ever wider sections of the American people since the Civil War. This trend started in fact with two amendments to the Constitution: the Thirteenth, which bans slavery, and the Fourteenth, which promises full civil rights (or at least voting rights) to all men regardless of race and also extends the Bill of Rights to the state and local levels. It took some time for the full effects of these (and subsequent amendments that extended full civil rights to women and others) to sink in, which is why most of the great advances in civil rights were made in the 20th century.
Now consider the contradiction: a basically authoritarian federal government with an imperial obsession, opposed to a still growing trend toward democracy and civil rights for all. This contradiction is at the core of the problems in the later stages of the Third Republic. By now, the trends toward democratization vs. world empire have diverged so completely that they have begun to clash. Soon the contradiction will tear the country apart. It could get nasty before we get a Fourth Republic, but let's hope not.
I hope that's a good enough explanation. Hopefully it's not merely a private reference now.
- The First Republic is the period from independence to the adoption of the Constitution, 1776-1787, including the period of the Articles of Confederation.
- The Second Republic began with the ratification of the Constitution and ended with the Civil War: 1787-1861.
- The Third Republic was established by the Union victory in the Civil War in 1865 and is the government still in power in Washington, DC today. Because the American Empire was built during this period, it is also known as the Imperial Republic. There is strong evidence that it is coming to an end.
One hallmark of the current Third Republic is a presidency far stronger than in any previous American republic. In fact, right now the presidency is being transformed into something of an elective absolute monarchy. Another is our not quite so laissez-faire form of capitalism in which corporations are defined as "legal persons" which in practice gives them greater rights than mere puny humans; right now, this is transforming into a full-blown state capitalism.
Counter to trends like these is the growing trend toward full civil rights for ever wider sections of the American people since the Civil War. This trend started in fact with two amendments to the Constitution: the Thirteenth, which bans slavery, and the Fourteenth, which promises full civil rights (or at least voting rights) to all men regardless of race and also extends the Bill of Rights to the state and local levels. It took some time for the full effects of these (and subsequent amendments that extended full civil rights to women and others) to sink in, which is why most of the great advances in civil rights were made in the 20th century.
Now consider the contradiction: a basically authoritarian federal government with an imperial obsession, opposed to a still growing trend toward democracy and civil rights for all. This contradiction is at the core of the problems in the later stages of the Third Republic. By now, the trends toward democratization vs. world empire have diverged so completely that they have begun to clash. Soon the contradiction will tear the country apart. It could get nasty before we get a Fourth Republic, but let's hope not.
I hope that's a good enough explanation. Hopefully it's not merely a private reference now.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Why Patriotism Is a Sin
A front page article in today's New York Times relates the tale of a Chinese student at Duke University who came upon clashing pro-Tibet and pro-China demonstrations. She tried to bring peace between the two groups. However, the pro-China group reacted viciously. She was publicly defamed on the Internet as a "traitor". She, and her family back in China, received death threats. What drove those pro-China people to persecute someone who just wanted to bring reconciliation to her school? Patriotism.. This is the true essence of patriotism: "my country right, right or wrong" — which really means "worship my country or die!"
Patriotism is a cult. The cult is called nationalism. Nationalism is defined as the cult of the State. With the death of Christendom, and Dar al-Islam threatened with being dragged out of the Dark Ages, nationalism has become the new Christendom. Inquisition, crusade, totalitarianism, and terrorism necessarily follow. And that's why patriotism is a sin.
Patriotism is a cult. The cult is called nationalism. Nationalism is defined as the cult of the State. With the death of Christendom, and Dar al-Islam threatened with being dragged out of the Dark Ages, nationalism has become the new Christendom. Inquisition, crusade, totalitarianism, and terrorism necessarily follow. And that's why patriotism is a sin.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Class Struggle
Back to the subject of my previous post "Populism vs. Elitism". Basically, what lies behind this phenomenon is something people call "class struggle." The idea is older than Karl Marx; it's an Enlightenment idea that predates even the French Revolution. In fact, it's impossible to understand the history of Western civilization since the rise of the Greeks without it.
What is this "class struggle (or warfare)," anyway? First I must explain that people in different roles in society tend to have different interests. Sometimes these interests clash. The most important clash of interests is that between those in power and those out of power. Those in power usually have an interest in exploiting those out of power in order to gain benefits at others' expense. Free riding, for example, is an almost irresistible temptation of power. Those out of power, however, would rather do their thing without busybody authorities constantly interfering in their affairs. This fundamental contradiction inherent in any society based on dominance hierarchy -- which means, right now, any society, period -- has its inevitable consequence in the form of some sort of class struggle.
Two eras have been plagued by wars originating in class struggle. These are the classical societies of Greece and Rome, and the modern age which started with the Renaissance. The cause in both cases is the idea of democracy, which has inspired the common people to resist the oppression of their kings, dictators, politicians, bureaucracies, and churches. Democracy is inherently revolutionary. That's because whenever the common people assert their interests, the people in power are always threatened with the loss of their power, and strike back. That's why revolutions, social and cultural as well as political, are always so violent. No establishment has ever tolerated any kind of popular revolution; so either the ruling establishment is overthrown or at least transformed, or the establishment prevails and the revolution is crushed.
Unfortunately, the rulers have their revolutionary ideologies too. Stalinism, fascism, Nazism, and neoconservatism are among the most popular elitist ideologies that sprang up since World War I. All of these are heavily influenced by synarchism, an ideology that originated in France among Catholic and neo-Gnostic monarchists who revolted against the principles of the French Revolution (but see the note below), and by Social Darwinism, a pseudoscience that tells the elite that they are the vanguard of evolution and that Nature, red in tooth and claw, has preordained them to supremacy over the masses. They are more violent reactions against the popular revolution that steal from the people their language of revolution. All true populists oppose them, since they attempt to use the new revolutionary means to restore the old order by any means possible.
Populism and elitism exist because of the class struggle, and are its political expression. As a libertarian populist, I've long since taken my stand. I'll tell you what I think about certain antipopulist "libertarians" and "objectivists" in a future entry.
Note: If you enter the word "synarchism" in any search engine, most of the entries you'll find come from the Lyndon LaRouche cult. He stole the idea from Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, and uses it in his wacko conspiracy theory as a code for his eternal bete noire, the "kike-limey (sic) conspiracy." But he's hiding behind "synarchy" to cover his own lust for dictatorship. Synarchy? Jeremiah Duggan suffered it from LaRouche himself. I'll write a future entry, or a full-blown essay, on this.
What is this "class struggle (or warfare)," anyway? First I must explain that people in different roles in society tend to have different interests. Sometimes these interests clash. The most important clash of interests is that between those in power and those out of power. Those in power usually have an interest in exploiting those out of power in order to gain benefits at others' expense. Free riding, for example, is an almost irresistible temptation of power. Those out of power, however, would rather do their thing without busybody authorities constantly interfering in their affairs. This fundamental contradiction inherent in any society based on dominance hierarchy -- which means, right now, any society, period -- has its inevitable consequence in the form of some sort of class struggle.
Two eras have been plagued by wars originating in class struggle. These are the classical societies of Greece and Rome, and the modern age which started with the Renaissance. The cause in both cases is the idea of democracy, which has inspired the common people to resist the oppression of their kings, dictators, politicians, bureaucracies, and churches. Democracy is inherently revolutionary. That's because whenever the common people assert their interests, the people in power are always threatened with the loss of their power, and strike back. That's why revolutions, social and cultural as well as political, are always so violent. No establishment has ever tolerated any kind of popular revolution; so either the ruling establishment is overthrown or at least transformed, or the establishment prevails and the revolution is crushed.
Unfortunately, the rulers have their revolutionary ideologies too. Stalinism, fascism, Nazism, and neoconservatism are among the most popular elitist ideologies that sprang up since World War I. All of these are heavily influenced by synarchism, an ideology that originated in France among Catholic and neo-Gnostic monarchists who revolted against the principles of the French Revolution (but see the note below), and by Social Darwinism, a pseudoscience that tells the elite that they are the vanguard of evolution and that Nature, red in tooth and claw, has preordained them to supremacy over the masses. They are more violent reactions against the popular revolution that steal from the people their language of revolution. All true populists oppose them, since they attempt to use the new revolutionary means to restore the old order by any means possible.
Populism and elitism exist because of the class struggle, and are its political expression. As a libertarian populist, I've long since taken my stand. I'll tell you what I think about certain antipopulist "libertarians" and "objectivists" in a future entry.
Note: If you enter the word "synarchism" in any search engine, most of the entries you'll find come from the Lyndon LaRouche cult. He stole the idea from Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, and uses it in his wacko conspiracy theory as a code for his eternal bete noire, the "kike-limey (sic) conspiracy." But he's hiding behind "synarchy" to cover his own lust for dictatorship. Synarchy? Jeremiah Duggan suffered it from LaRouche himself. I'll write a future entry, or a full-blown essay, on this.
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