by Len Hart, The Existentialist CowboyThe GOP owns this outcome and should accept responsibility for it. Instead, the GOP can be depended upon to press for more tax cuts, more preferential treatment and bogus economic 'theories' like supply-side economics better know by the derisive description: trickle-down theory.
Now --the above is the context in which every other outcome must be considered: every Democratic regime since 1900 has presided over greater JOB and GDP growth than has ANY GOP regime. This is especially apparent in the post-Reagan era where it is easy to find the official stats that rank post-WWII Presidents in terms of job creation and GDP growth.
Now --the above is the context in which every other outcome must be considered: every Democratic regime since 1900 has presided over greater JOB and GDP growth than has ANY GOP regime. This is especially apparent in the post-Reagan era where it is easy to find the official stats that rank post-WWII Presidents in terms of job creation and GDP growth.
Progressives Should 'infiltrate' the Democratic Party!
The GOP are economically incompetent. Now --if they should wish to change their stripes and eschew, repudiate the crime syndicate of which they have been a part --FINE! Let them confess their sins against a vast majority of Americans, that segment of the population which labors and by doing so produces wealth, wealth that has in fact 'trickled up' during the GOP regimes of R. Reagan, Bush Sr and Bush Jr.
If you don't like the Democratic party --infiltrate it and urge everyone you know to infiltrate it. That's called 'grassroots' organizing. We don't have a lot of time and the Democrats already have an infrastructure in place. There is no time to create a viable separate party. Eventually, when it is successful, the 'occupation movement' will be absorbed and, hopefully, it's ideals will be affirmed by an established mainstream party and, eventually, made official policy. At that point, we will have won!
ORGANIZE!
Read SAUL ALINSKY, a 'left leaning, liberal' and organizer who scared the pants off the GOP! They were so frightened of him that they adopted his policies and used them against us! Now --who is to blame for that but the 'sunshine liberal' who decides to just sit on his ass and gripe because the world does not measure up to his unrealistic expectations?
Alinsky urged that REAL activists organize block by block, precinct by precinct, county by county, state by state!
FIRST -- take back the Democratic party by taking back the neighborhoods
SECONDLY --organize the neighborhoods to take back the party machines for progressives and/or liberals
THIRD --having taken back the DEMOCRATIC PARTY, you organize at the state level to get out the fucking vote.
Now --if liberals/progressives are not willing to read Alinsky (the GOP has) or if liberals/progressives are not willing to work to reform the only party that has a realistic chance given the odds against them, given the unfair 'statistical weighting' that results from endless, boring primaries and other roadblocks, hurdles and obstructions, then there is really nothing more that I can say!
The GOP are either CROOKED or INCOMPETENT!
The GOP is a top down party of psychopathic authoritarians dividing themselves into 'fuhrers' and followers of 'der fuhrer'! The rank and file believe what they believe because it assuages their feelings of fear and guilt. Stanford University conducted and published clinical studies of the fact that the GOP inclined have more nightmares, night-terrors than do normal people.
The transfer of wealth upward is deliberate. It’s how the ‘pay-offs’ are laundered. Clinton reversed the trend but briefly. That he dared get a blow job was much more important than saving a nation from a disastrous fate. In fact, it was all the GOP could pin on him, though he was under a sweeping investigation seemingly from the get go. An investigation in search of real crimes and, finding none, invented the ‘felony blow job’.
Someone said that Satan’s biggest ‘trick’ was convincing the world that he did not exist. The GOP’s biggest trick is convincing the American people that they are not a kooky cult of crooks, liars and elitists but a real 'political party'. The GOP has had such success with this ploy, I am surprised the MOB didn't try it! But the GOP is not a real political party; it has characteristics of kooky cults and other traits more closely identified with crime syndicates and/or gangs.
It is entirely understandable that the GOP rank and file would have nightmares and night-terrors! It's because the GOP rank and file are insecure, frightened, terrified. They want you to be as well. Nightmares are but dream manifestations of fears and anxieties. Normal people deal with their fears and anxieties. But --the GOP has outdone them all. They have built-up an entire party around fears, anxieties, phobias, prejudices, hate of various kinds, prejudice, bigotry and ordinary garden-variety crookedness and dishonesty.
The WALL ST occupation is a big tent but should NEVER be big enough to tolerate the watering-down of its message: A SOCIETY that has created, tolerated or --worse --ENCOURAGED a ruling 1 percent is a sick society. Now --we would call a doctor a QUACK should he tell you to just keep on doing whatever it is that's making you sick.
Cops Resort to Form on Wall St; They Represent 'da man!'!
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10 comments:
Thanks for the introduction to Saul Alinsky. I'm 58 and have never heard of him before.
"A People’s Organization lives in a world of hard reality. It lives in the midst of smashing forces, dashing struggles, sweeping cross-currents, ripping passions, conflict, confusion, seeming chaos, the hot and the cold, the squalor and the drama, which people prosaically refer to as life and students describe as 'society'."
Amen to that.
Thanks for commenting, anonymous. Interestingly, while Alinsky was a 'radical' on the left of the spectrum, I first learned about him in a REPUBLICAN campaign manual. I believe that the GOP understood --and feared --the power and effectiveness of his strategies and tactics; so much so they ADOPTED them. Whatever 'success' the GOP has enjoyed in the second half of the 20th Century is due in no small part to Saul Alinsky --a 'leftist' by GOP reckoning.
The think tanks, media machinery, and political strategy of the 1 percent have been in place for many years and I feel skeptical that it is possible to change anything, even with grassroots organizing. Most alarmingly, voting machines that can be hacked in the blink of an eye with no one the wiser are being installed in more and more precincts, so even if we do manage to get organized, our votes could get shifted to the other party and we would never know. Also, I would say that most people vote for whatever party they vote for because their parents did - it's their family tradition - and they don't really care to look at anything very closely because they are just trying to survive in this terrible economy and to enjoy whatever free time they have. Most Republicans do not belong to the 1 percent. This other 99 percent consists of the religious right and small business people who don't believe in supporting a welfare state. What needs to change most in the USA is that the 1 percent should pay their share of taxes, bailed out banks should not still be giving bonuses to their executives, and government should be serving the needs of the people by, among other things, protecting the environment from greedy coporations (one of the scariest things happening in the USA is Monsanto), building roads, ensuring access to education and health care for everyone, and helping the poor with food stamps, childcare, job training, etc. There are many things that are broken.
The think tanks, media machinery, and political strategy of the 1 percent have been in place for many years and I feel skeptical that it is possible to change anything, even with grassroots organizing. Most alarmingly, voting machines that can be hacked in the blink of an eye with no one the wiser are being installed in more and more precincts, so even if we do manage to get organized, our votes could get shifted to the other party and we would never know. Also, I would say that most people vote for whatever party they vote for because their parents did - it's their family tradition - and they don't really care to look at anything very closely because they are just trying to survive in this terrible economy and to enjoy whatever free time they have. Most Republicans do not belong to the 1 percent. This other 99 percent consists of the religious right and small business people who don't believe in supporting a welfare state. What needs to change most in the USA is that the 1 percent should pay their share of taxes, bailed out banks should not still be giving bonuses to their executives, and government should be serving the needs of the people by, among other things, protecting the environment from greedy coporations (one of the scariest things happening in the USA is Monsanto), building roads, ensuring access to education and health care for everyone, and helping the poor with food stamps, childcare, job training, etc. There are many things that are broken.
Sometimes, the violence of the Police must be met with counter violence.
marain said...
The think tanks, media machinery, and political strategy of the 1 percent have been in place for many years and I feel skeptical that it is possible to change anything, even with grassroots organizing.
The ruling elite of just 1 percent has increasingly limited opposition options. If, in this case, a revolution should occur, the establishment, the ruling elite, must bear ALL responsibility should the revolution turn violent.
Certainly --these ruthless, venal robbers, liars and miscreants 'will not go quietly into that goodnight'! We should EXPECT them to put up a violent fight and, as we have seen, the COPS seem all to willing and eager to do so! We simply MUST be prepared and organized to counter violence.
It was Che Guevara who wrote: "We cannot be sure of having something to live for unless we are willing to die for it."
In his "Principles of Guerrilla Warfare" Che wrote: "When the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law, peace is considered already broken."
Most Republicans do not belong to the 1 percent.
Of course not! That only proves the utter absurdity of anyone not among the ruling 1 percent espousing allegiance to such a party. But anyone, of any economic stratum, supporting the GOP becomes, by their support, a part of the machine by which the rest of us are enslaved. In terms of guilt and/or complicity I make NO distinctions between the GOP leadership and the so-called 'rank and file'. "But I vass only folloving orters!!!" is NOT a defense.
Len said:
Of course not! That only proves the utter absurdity of anyone not among the ruling 1 percent espousing allegiance to such a party. But anyone, of any economic stratum, supporting the GOP becomes, by their support, a part of the machine by which the rest of us are enslaved. In terms of guilt and/or complicity I make NO distinctions between the GOP leadership and the so-called 'rank and file'. "But I vass only folloving orters!!!" is NOT a defense.
Yes, I do agree with this, however, as I tried to say before, I'm not sure that the 'rank and file' are truly aware of what's going on. I think part of the strategy should somehow be to wake them up and change them - get them to see that they are being used by the 1 percent.
There are, of course, two kinds of party members and that, I believe, is largely true of every party. 1) there is the GOP leadership, the policy makers or, at least, those having most influence upon it; and then there is the rank and file or even more loosely, those who just sit out the primaries but vote GOP in a general election. They could simply be ignorant. In that case, they should not be voting at all. That applies to Democrats as well, in fact, anyone too lazy to learn enough basics to cast a competent vote. There's not much use in talking to the willfully stupid of any party. Carl Jung did not deal with endemic stupidity but did talk about 'psychopathy'. He estimated that some 30 percent of every population is certifiably psychopathic. That --I believe (in the U.S.) --is the 30 percent who habitually vote and, in other ways, support the GOP. In other words, that 30 percent is the GOP base.
Len wrote:
...the 30 percent who habitually vote and, in other ways, support the GOP. In other words, that 30 percent is the GOP base.
I have one family member with a university education who belongs to the religious right and who votes for the GOP mainly because of their support of "pro-life" legislation, but also, schizophrenically in my view, for their support of the "war on terror", including the war in Iraq where more than 1.4 million Iraqis have died, because, in their view, terrorists must be hunted down and exterminated, regardless of collateral damage. FOX "News" is their major source of information and they like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. I do not know how to reason with this person. How can one be a Christian and support war in any form? How can one claim to believe in JC and not support social programs that assist the poor? How can they listen, day after day, to the hate-filled speech on FOX, and not realize how extremely contrary such messages are to the messages in their Bible that they claim to believe in? In every other way, this person is a nice person and not a psychopath. The religious right is some percentage of the remaining non-psychopathic 70 percent. The religious right would also like to see democracy replaced by theocracy. In some ways, this movement is scarier than the psychopathic 30 percent.
marain said..
FOX "News" is their major source of information and they like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. I do not know how to reason with this person.
I've given up trying to reason with this kind of person. They are in that 'thirty percent' that Carl Jung defined. What is scary is how FOX has exploited that 'base' for venal purposes. In simpler times, a 'sane' society could restrain the insane but that was before demagogues and media whores learn how to exploit their phobias and their psychopathy. BTW --studies at Stanford University a few years back found that Republicans have greater levels of anxiety and many more nightmares and night terrors than do 'normal' people.
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