( – promoted by buhdydharma )
I’ve been saying this so much for so long, I decided to just create a picture this time. There is not lesser of two evils. It’s all a carefully orchestrated charade. Or, as depicted, a puppet show.
There will be no electoral solution. There is no “better Democrat” strategy. There will be no revolution, televised or not. The game is rigged. Checkmate.
The only way to win is to play a different game.
Here’s a clue though: almost all leftwing societies, socialists or whatever you want to call them, did not arise from building over time a strong leftwing political party. In every case they arose as a reaction to rightwing governments.
Where leftist organization plays in is being ready to seize the moment when rightwing policies bring disaster upon the people. But as we have seen with the election of Obama, they may have got us beat in that regard too. But most likely, it’s just because the disaster wasn’t disastrous enough this time.
But by far, the biggest aid to a return to “progressivism” or “social democracy”, or whatever you want to call it, was the disastrousness of George W. Bush’s presidency. And the biggest impediment is fake lefties like the Democrats. That’s the little song and dance they do. All that useful anger from the Bush years was dissipated with the “change” to Barack Obama. But the change was an illusion. This is how the puppet show works.
So you want to move the whole country left in a big way sooner? Elect Sarah Palin. Or stick with the Democrats. The puppet show won’t work forever. It’s already failing in Europe as socialists sweep elections and the people call for neoliberal heads.
In sum, the real fight is here. Not the government. Prepare the people so when the crash comes, they won’t choose a militant fascist instead of a peaceful socialist.
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Is to close the partisan divide and work on making people understand that it is neither Republican nor democrat thar represent the enemy but both.
The only thing left after eight years of Bush taking back from the people and more than one of a prez from the “opposition party” asking the base to give back a little more is protest of both sides.
I do think there is one very important thing that Leftists can do while these hopeless conventional politics games are playing out.
Some people are praying that the status quo can somehow right itself and continue indefinitely, but many people are past that point already. They’re jobless or in constant fear of joblessness, and they want someone to find a way they can have dependable and meaningful employment that pays a living wage. They’re homeless or in constant fear of homelessness, and they want someone to find a way they and their families can be assured of decent shelter in a safe community.
The Left needs to be providing and demonstrating solutions in local communities. We have a radically different approach to providing human needs from the neoliberals, but we can’t just talk about it.
We must prove it.
Mao did it in the hills, even during the Japanese invasion, and the Nationalists saw his success as their biggest threat. Ho did it in the rice paddies and no amount of “pacification” could overcome it.
There are urban and rural communities that have been abandoned by the neoliberals. They could care less about the people who live in such places, and right now, they don’t even care much about the real estate. These are challenging testing grounds, but there is no denying that the people living in these abandoned places need to find another way of doing things. As economic conditions hit the next jump down, more people and places will be joining the “abandoned” ranks. Show them that things can be better, and they will be ready to try something new.
In my opinion, the Left should go where it is needed.
… for a Leninist strategy of deliberately monkey-wrenching things to radicalize the situation. The real world is already throwing monkey wrenches and will throw more and more over time.
We need to build organizations – no need to call them political parties, since they would be what political parties at one time used to be, not what political parties are today – that can take over city hall through the ballot box and put in effective emergency measures if the shit hits the fan. Movements. Likely distinct movements in different, overlapping, regions.
Up from there, we need to have a balance of power position in state legislatures to prevent the state legislature from blocking what needs to be done locally, which includes freeing up the ballot box and keeping it free.
The National Republicans changed their name to the Whigs in response to Jackon’s Democrats, but in the 1850’s on the course of a decade they fell apart as the anti-slavery Whigs were purged by the pro-slavery Whigs and the 19th century Republican Party was formed by pasting together a coalition of anti-slavery Whigs, abolitionists, former Know Nothings, Free Soilers, and others.
The great issue of the day is corporate feudalism, and with the Republicans firmly entrenched in the most extreme of pro-feudalist camps, and the Democrats divided between “pro-reformed-feudalism” (quite like the pro-slavery Whigs “regulation of the worst excesses of abusive slaveholders”) and anti-feudalists, the Democrats of today are in a position quite similar of the Whigs coming into the 1850’s.
We are in that position. We even have our modern Know Nothings, anti-big-government anti-corporatists funded by corporations as an astroturf organizing strategy in pursuit of big government so long as it is in the hands of the great feudal barons.
i think this is the shortest diary i have ever seen tdv post.
It had someone with a photo of Obama with a Hitler mustache.
A year ago or more I would have thought, “what an absolute nut” about the person holding it up, now it seems silly, but I don’t don’t totally dismiss the feeling behind it as illegitimate.
For myself there is no parsing or rationalizing of war crimes, and that is what Obama is doing. Bush, Obama, McCain…one in the same.
hardly anybody voted. The house was 30,000 to one (for population purposes). It began as a close corp. aristocracy. We’ve expanded the franchise but, alas, nothing has changed. Women and the working poor tilted this country slightly toward egalitarian democracy after about 160 years, but the natural tendency for cartels to form are just too much to counter.
As long as money owns the myth and megaphone, it’s awfully hard to fight. And as long as most resources are privately owned (and protected by force), I see the Anglo/American Aristocracy continuing. Once you’ve become an Earl or Duke, or big time constitutional office holder, it’s hard to give up those nice incidental benefits. And once the Lords can raise their armies, there’s not much you can do. And remember how they did that: God and Country. And so far, it’s nearly always worked.
this diary?
I didn’t miss yours.
the lines become clearer.
It is much like the amorphous “middle class” that is meant to divorce the good people from the welfare queeens, illegals and others of the lower classes.
The seemingly inclusionary is actually exclusionary.
Our progessive president is rather obviously hardcore conservative. “Conservative” Republicans and Democrats are actually reactionaries dreaming of returning to a time that never was.
Best, Terry
More, please.
I knew the game was rigged. I knew it was rigged so that the only options allowed were right-wing politicians. So I voted for a left-wing politician. I defied the system. I refused it my acquiescence. I denied it my vote.
Of course, even then, my vote for Kucinich played right into the system. He just got done proving the futility of writing in a Democrat politician, even one as close to my political beliefs as Dennis is.
I’m voting independent from now on, straight down the line, researched to weed out right-wingers. No more will I vote for a Democrat, not even a write-in like Dennis. I’m done. Voting for the “lesser” evil is still voting for evil, and there’s no “lesser” in the equation. There never was.