The Republican Party Is Over

I've said previously that the Republicans have lost this election. The Mitt Romney campaign, it is said, are secretly conceding. But I wasn't confident enough to go one step further. But Laura Ingraham has. Even Rush Limbaugh has. The Republican Party is over. Of course, the conservative pundits add one caveat: "if Obama wins this election" (which they think is impossible unless Americans' faith is lacking). I'm saying Obama has already won it. Fact: The Democrats got a "bounce" in the polls from their convention. The Republicans got nothing. Not that polls are scientific or anything, but this is a bad sign. Fact: The Republican presidential ticket was upstaged at their own convention by an old man raving dementedly at an empty chair. (The chair became an instant star. Watch out, inanimate carbon rod!) Fact: This election the Republicans face not one but two spoiler parties (the Libertarian Party, which has picked up the Ron Paul libertarian vote; and the Constitution Party, which aims to be the party of the Christian Right); the Democrats face none, not even the Greens that helped cost them the 2000 election. Obama now has Clinton's spoiler advantage. Fact: There are five upcoming debates, two between the presidential candidates and two vice-presidential. So far, Willard Romney Inc. and Paul Ryan have not shown that they are ready to take on Obama and Biden. But these are reasons why the current Republican presidential ticket will lose the 2012 election. But here's some signs that the GOP may not survive this election at all:

1. Demographics. The older the generation, the whiter and more conservative, and the more likely voters will vote Republican. Also, in the wake of the Crash of 2008, the nation is becoming more urban, and cities are far more diverse and liberal than the suburbs and exurbs that are the traditional base of conservative power.
2. The libertarian wing was in effect purged. It is no longer part of the Republican coalition at all. It has its own party: the Libertarian Party. After 2012, not even conservative libertarians will vote Republican ever again.
3. Another major wing of the GOP, the Christian Right, has a third party of its own competing for Republican votes: the Constitution Party. In this election the CP is in perfect position to suck up votes from white Evangelical fundamentalists that would otherwise go Republican if only the GOP candidate were not Mammon-worshipping Mormon plutocrat Willard Romney Inc. More on the CP below.
4. At the Republican National Convention, the party establishment pushed through a rule change that would in effect eliminate any more populist "insurrections" like those behind Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and Ron Paul. The Republican National Committee, in effect, established a dictatorship within the party, like that of the Communist Party to which so many neocons in the party establishment used to belong. The Sovietization of the GOP is now complete.
5. The plutocrats who currently control the GOP are not loyal to any political party; rather, they buy parties. The coming Republican Massacre will convince them that the GOP is now a failed investment, so they'll abandon their losses and shift their attention to the Democrats.

I've previously predicted that the Republicans would shrink into a sectional religious party. But the Constitution Party is already that; a religious GOP is redundant. So I am now confident enough to take that one step further: It's not just the end of an era of Republican dominance. It's the end of the Republican Party, period. It's about to join its predecessors, the Federalists and Whigs, to oblivion. And after that? Consider that the Constitution Party is the existing sectional religious of the South, and the main base of Libertarian popularity is the West. That would make the Democrats the only remaining national party in 2016. You know the corporatists who now own the GOP will attempt a hostile takeover of the Democrats, complete with a purge of the liberal base and

The Problem with July 4 and Other High Holy Days of the Chosen Nation

Happy America's Birthday, readers! Sorry if I'm skeptical, but I'm one of those people who grow radical as they grow older (I'm approaching middle age already, though I don't look it) and I haven't called it "Independence Day" since the day I found out America is the reincarnation of the British Empire. Before then, America stood for freedom or something. Now it stands for one and only one thing, Total World Domination (called in our official State religion, Americanism — you know, the one that claims the Second Coming of Christ occurred on this day in 1776 which we're supposed to be celebrating? — Manifest Destiny, freedom and democracy be damned). America Takes Over The World — and after that, United Space of America! Sure enough, what started as the celebration of a young nation's freedom is now the cult day (one of many) dedicated to the supremacy of Our Heroic Imperial Armed Forces who keep the world in subjection. It's the ultimate example of mission creep, which should be in school textbooks after the American Empire follows all other empires in history into the proverbial trash can of history. The worst part of the day, according to my mother (who, among other things, owns two dogs), is that this day's gigantic fireworks orgy terrifies all the animals, sometimes to madness. I've come to the conclusion that it symbolizes America's national strategy of bombing all opposition to smithereens for the sake of our nation's corporate profits, freedom and democracy and the lives of innocent civilians be damned. The conquest of Earth is America's Manifest Destiny, you liberal homosexual commie Eurotrash traitors! Four years ago, I posted here my opinion that patriotism is a sin. Now I know better: nationalism is a cult, the cult of the State, and patriotism is its expression of faith. In other words, a nation is just a glorified tribe. Me, I'm an atheist, and the nation-state strikes me as a pseudo-secular neopagan replacement for the God who abandoned Old Christendom, a search for a God where there is none. Every State believes it and it alone is by definition the one true God, the same way every tribe by definition is the one true master race. But what is a State, really? A giant corporation whose business is tribalism, no less monopolistic and predatory than any other giant corporation. I'm an anarchist because I'm an atheist. So I'm not treating the Fourth of July like the High Holy Day of the Nation that it's supposed to be, any more, say, than I sing "O Canada" three days earlier. I'm going to enjoy the company of my family and tonight's fireworks show (maybe even take pictures). I won't spoil the occasion for my friends and relatives because, hey, I like them. Besides, America belongs to its oligarchs, not its people, and the people — all the people of the world — belong to them too, by definition. Manifest Destiny, y'know. This opinion is my addition to these posts: "When Americans Understood the Declaration of Indepencence", Thomas J. DiLorenzo, LewRockwell.com "How to Celebrate July 4", Sheldon Richman, Free Association (End the empire — now!) "Founding Fathers Quotes You've Probably Never Heard", David O. Atkins, Hullaballoo ("Buncha commies!") "'Deriving Their Just Power from the Consent of the Governed" (as long as they can prove to Republicans that they're worthy)" by Digby, Hullabaloo ("I don't think Thomas Jefferson had this sort of thing in mind when he wrote the great document [Declaration of Independence].") "To be a patriot: Adlai Stevenson, McCarthyism and a message for Independence Day by MrLiberal, Daily Kos (how the liberal Democratic candidate tried to wrest the word "patriot" from Joe McCarthy and lost) ...and other comments by skeptics of the Empire's Birthday. Note that these are posts by liberals, genuine libertarians, and Old Right conservatives. The true Left is, of course, against the very idea of nationhood on principle: humanity is one and should stop listening to the divisive siren songs of would-be messiahs and their giant corporations of tribalism they call nations; We the People need to control our destiny together, collectively, because our future depends on it.

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:

"Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today."

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...

Rand Paul Is Over: or, Why Conservative Libertarianism Is a Contradiction in Terms

The article: "Rachel Maddow Demolishes Rand Paul" by Joan Walsh, Salon

Yesterday, "fighting liberal" MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow interviewed Kentucky senatorial candidate and "TEA Party" favorite Rand Paul on her show after he crushed his establishment opponent, secretary of state Trey Grayson, in the Republican primary election. Joan Walsh insists Maddow won big. Ray Beckerman is not so sure. Me, I had to see for myself. So I read Walsh's article and watched the interview. When it was over, I realized that Walsh was spot on. Toward the end of the interview, I got the feeling that I was witnessing a fatal car wreck as it was happening and watching the driver die right in front of me: what I witnessed was the complete self-destruction of the New Right's rising superstar in the span of half a minute. In effect, even despite himself, Paul defended the nasty racial protectionism called Jim Crow, convicting himself of not just racism but statism. He outed himself as a conservative. He didn't sound libertarian to me: he extolled the economic freedom of corporations, pointedly including racist owners of lunch counters, while spitting on individual freedom in the form of consumer choice, which Jim Crow was designed to restrict. My verdict: Maddow crushed him, ending his political career in front of the whole world. Rand Paul is over.

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.

Populism vs. Elitism

I said I was sympathetic to certain forms of socialism. Just before I woke up this morning, I realized (or, more accurately, remembered) the reason why:

I'm a libertarian populist.

I know why so many libertarians despair about the future of freedom. It's because they tend to look down on the common people. Some of them go so far as to attack democracy as little more than a means by which the benighted masses can loot their neighbors and legislate various ways of getting something for nothing. They blank out the fact that the common people, especially those in the cities (in the European Middle Ages, these were the merchants, craftsmen, and artisans), who are the traditional driving force of the free market. These are the producers.

But under mercantilism or state capitalism, the government interferes with the market (case in point: the desperate and increasingly futile flailings of the US Federal Reserve as it tries to stop the economic depression the Fed itself started), creating a breed of capitalist courtier (or courtesan: political whore) among managers and financiers that goes to sometimes extreme lengths to get something for nothing, generally at the expense of the taxpayer (through corporate welfare). If the free market is populist, then state capitalism is elitist, since its financial basis is not individual trade but political pull.

There are libertarian elitists. These are the people who preach freedom but practice war and corporate welfare. There's a lot of those in, say, the Libertarian Party.

Likewise, socialism too has its elitists and populists. Socialist elitists make up those small cabals of "nomenclaturists" who oppress the working class in the name of the (alleged) supremacy of the working class. These are the Stalinists and fascists. Socialist populists believe that only the working class can overcome political oppression, economic inequality (extremes of wealth and poverty), and repressive social traditions.

The same goes for liberals and conservatives, and other political stances.

Elitism is based on the assumption of the inherent inferiority of the masses and the alleged enlightenment assumed to inhere in high positions within social hierarchies. Populism trusts the people's ability to rule their own lives and change for the better. In the libertarian populist view, the modern era's moral and ethical advances over the barbaric Middle Ages are due to the trust created by peaceful trade among individual people and the prosperity this creates.

Naturally, since the interests of the people and the elites who rule them are generally at odds, populism and elitism are incompatible and must necessarily clash. This gets into the concept of class struggle. But that's the subject of another post...