Jefferson’s house: foreclosed

(10:30AM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

PART ONE: THE KITCHEN

     All ideology fails at some logical declension. Conservative ideology fails immediately, on every tenet. All ideologies rightly belong being argued in academia. Conservative ideology belongs deep in a little used musty library kept by an obscure, wan, nose-picking curator. I would not want to destroy it; after all, it is just a bad idea. The act of trying to destroy such a wicked thought is antithetical because it thrives on nihilism. Thus is explains the power derived by right-wing commentary from left wing derision.

      Democratic partisans have not learned that simple reciprocal formula. Maybe, they are the ones who are not so smart. So, I wonder, are Democratic partisans just morons or do they have an emotional, self-destructive need to bloviate. Even a short, reasoned treatise to correct the record sullied by Republicans seems like vanity.

     Eric Alterman, Matthew Yglesis, Matt Taibbi, Kevin Drum, and many others; not to drop names but to separate names from what is pejoratively referred to as the Main Stream Media (MSM). The debt of gratitude that their readers often express is that they are dependable sources of information, separate from the mundane narratives that hold no value or depth. Some readers have quoted them to set their choice of reading material as being apart from the mundane and shallow narrative.

      There are similar journalists and personalities on the Right, they believe also setting the record straight. According to ideological opponents of these commentators and journalists, they are not only incorrect but also engaged in nefarious political chicanery.

     What they, the beloved writers on the left and the MSM have in common is to put all of their output into a political context.

     Also included with them are the punsters, pollsters, strategist and party operatives on all sides in the political contests that are called elections. I can only venture a guess as to many of the roughly 100 million voters they reach. 1%, I think is a high number, a half million paid party operatives and less than that of paid wordsmiths, broadcast personalities, journalists, correspondents and such like.

     As a percentage of the overall population of the United States, they represent about .03%. I welcome anyone to accurately correct my back of the envelope estimations. Do they only reach voters? I think not. Is the reason that there are more than twice as many non-voters than voters always due to the sociological reasons that are often recited or could it be that non-voters realize that the ideological divide is a purposeful deception of both political parties?

     I hesitate to call the economics of the political culture a business. It is more a racket because they have captured their patrons in a phony war. If someone views their fellow inhabitant as an enemy, then rhetorical brickbats are justified to protect their interests. Accusing someone for being bat-shit crazy, on political grounds, is not only ill informed but a gross misapprehension of insanity.

     Democrats would do well to stop taking the bait, all partisans would do well to stop supporting political parties and candidates unless the flow of time and money is reversed and invested directly by the parties and candidates in question, into building their communities. At least, after the election, there will be something to show for it, it may even induce some unity among citizens and non-voters will be recognized as voting in their community by helping and receiving.

     Are there any among all of you that thinks that a new definition of voting is in order? Just asking.

PART TWO: A NEW ADDITION, CHEAP MATERIALS

     Historically, progressivism was local, non-partisan and centered on discreet economic issues. The recent primary bid by Bill Halter was none of those. Yes, there was an appeal for grass roots support. If I lived in Kentucky, I would not have seen Bill Halter as the best Democrat for the job. I most assuredly would not have seen him as a progressive Democrat that once elected, would have championed progressive issues, not that Blanche Lincoln was either. I think Kentucky Democrats saw her as the least of two evils.

     Yet, a rich union and a national Democratic organizing campaign promoted Bill Halter. Had the Tea Party activists or any well-funded right wing group done this same thing, Democrats would have gone ballistic.

     It was a bid for political power with which to bargain with the Democratic Party establishment and carried no guarantee of ‚progressive‚ change. It was based upon ‚the ends justifying the means‚ con, i.e. vote for the ‚good guys‚ it is wrong no matter who does it. This was a $20 million, ego driven, prom King campaign.

     Progressivism arises on its own; it is egalitarianism that so called     progressives‚ should concentrate their time, money and mostly, their egos on. Maybe they should just call themselves people. Just sayin’.

PART THREE: THE MAIN ROOM, CONGRESS

     Once, I was vehement about the restoration of democracy in the United States. I looked back and saw that the presidential election of 2000 was decided by the SCOTUS. Then, there was the invasion of Iraq; one lesson from that was that democracy could not be imposed even by a large powerful democracy. But, this was all happening in a democracy.

     I learned then, in a more formal way called reading, that that mature democracies have problems, militarism, empire, neo-colonialism, class inequality, the poor treatment of immigrants and the concentration of wealth and power leading to political conservatism. The things that I saw as wrong occurred in my democracy, in Jefferson’s house.

     I vowed that I was part of a struggle for human rights and social justice and that my democracy had to include that struggle more fully and explicitly, until then, the United States was never going to be a shining beacon. This country was living a myth for the left and the right, and the party cultures were cashing in.

     Politics as practiced today, will never overcome these problems or make worthwhile changes to realize egalitarian values. The business of politics or as I see it, the politics racket, is not a democratic enterprise. It succeeds by sowing dissention and capturing its patrons in fear.

     Further, elected officials have no room to compromise because governing has been shifted to non-elected power and non-elected money establishments, selling or trading accommodations for them in their own space. First, the power establishment strong-armed their way into the main room, then after the money boys bought the room in exchange for votes, they rented offices to the Cabinet.

     War is injustice, profiteering and death. Human rights and social justice will never be produced by war, even the so-called metaphorical war that high-minded revolutionaries in this country claim for themselves. As in, “it has been a brutal war on the underserved, but I am fighting a metaphorical war. Can you be a more confused than that? It’s going around, low level assholines is more than a virus and less than a plague. It knows no social, economic, religious or racial boundaries save being confined to the human species.

     My quest is a struggle, it involves sacrifice and unlike war, the risks to civilians are voluntary and unlike politics, fully realized in consciousness.

PART FOUR: THE STRUGGLE

     The fate of the country lies in two places.

     The first is the government, no future there. Count on politicians to fuck things up and it has nothing to do with party affiliation.

      The legacy elected government plus the non-elected establishment power brokers who manage plus the non-elected financial plutocracy that wangled the death of capitalism. That is the government; chaotic, conflicted and everything that people say it is; the term for it is an aged democracy. Realize that, even if all of the media neglects to report it quite that way. Hey, it’s a business, this is America, Caveat emptor baby.

   Remember capitalism? It used to be a functioning part of democracy, then democracy became a dysfunctional part of capitalism and then democracy became a vestige of profiteering.

  POTUS is the corporate lawyer in chief, elected officials have no room to compromise because they have been strong armed out of the room by the power establishment, who had the room sold out from under them by money interests. The cabinet still rents an office there, it’s still the law because the power boys have managed to protect it.

    The second place is with people who manage to simply abandon supporting the defunct political process. They put time, energy and money directly into numerous, discreet efforts to maintain their communities. They obtain confidence from process rather than cynicism from party politics and having nothing to show for it.

    I am talking again about the struggle for human rights and social justice; feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, building playgrounds at your school, healing the sick, freeing the unjustly prosecuted and teaching the illiterate.

      Build hospitals and universities. Create partnerships to manufacture new energy like LEEDCO in Lake Erie. Take the burden of administering government programs by using non-profits. The legislators want that anyway so they do not have the burden of governing.

     Mature democracies are burdened by militarism, neo-colonialism, class disparity and the tendency to concentrate wealth and power, resulting in conservatism. These are the things that I see as being wrong and they occurred in this democracy.

     No social ideologies needed or wanted. People hold beliefs and should continue to hold them as personal beliefs. There is no way I am going to subscribe to any, not of my choosing and there is no civil way to enforce one. Get over it Right wingers and Left wingers.

  Get out of the politics box, the economics box or the God box people; they do not contain this struggle, it contains them. In fact, partisans perseverate in these ideologies like walking goes with spasticity in a neurological condition.

      Spirituality>politics>economics.

      The politically minded want to put everything in the politics box including the endlessly remunerative and ego driven subject of left vs right.

     The religiously minded want to put everything into the God box, which is a bottomless source of material wealth and power.

      The tyros of the world want to frame everything as economics, they have managed to escape criticism by letting the practice of capitalism and educations, which they destroyed, take the blame.

      The last unifying spiritual movement in the US was the civil rights movement. Before he was assassinated, MLK attempted to embrace a larger context of human rights. His racially oriented supporters were unable to follow despite the fact that this was the context of their struggle.