Here, (IN PLAIN TEXT) following, is a comment from DaveW to me in another thread and, below it, the reply that, despite all my efforts, I cannot post there:
DaveW wrote:
<blockquote>
Re: How to Get it Done (none / 0)
Maybe among all the verbiage, one of these times you’ll insert an explanation of how letting healthcare reform die at the hands of a corrupt system and a corrupt opposition makes anything better. Yeah, we’re in total agreement that the system is corrupt and unsustainable. A central core of that corruption is the de facto veto of Senate legislation by a 41% minority of the most corrupt. Another central core is the millstone tied around our necks by a Constitution that demands that a citizen of Wyoming have 70 times the Senate representation of a citizen of California. Another central core is allowing paid advertising in political campaigns. Another central core is the extreme power corporations to buy legislation and legislators with money that doesn’t belong to them.
We agree, I think, that these and many other aspects of our political fundamentals need radical reform. I wish they all could have been fixed before healthcare came up. Ain’t gonna happen, so I don’t know what it is that you’re ranting about. Say it outright: Do you want to sacrifice healthcare reform if passing it means using parliamentary maneuvering? Is that your point? If not, what do all your rants about corruption have to do with the issue at hand? All I get out of it is that you’d rather feel "pure" than be sullied by dirty fighting for some small measure of economic justice.
FDR’s response to progressive demands: "I agree. Now go out and make me do it."
by DaveW on Sun Oct 18th, 2009 at 01:37:01 PM EST
</blockquote>
And here is my reply:
citing you:
"We agree, I think, that these and many other aspects of our political fundamentals need radical reform. I wish they all could have been fixed before healthcare came up. Ain’t gonna happen, so I don’t know what it is that you’re ranting about. Say it outright: Do you want to sacrifice healthcare reform if passing it means using parliamentary maneuvering? Is that your point? If not, what do all your rants about corruption have to do with the issue at hand? All I get out of it is that you’d rather feel "pure" than be sullied by dirty fighting for some small measure of economic justice."
Event though you _claim_ that you "wish they i.e. "these and many other aspects of our political fundamentals needing radical reform all could have been fixed before healthcare came up," your consistently stated views at this site belie such a claim as being, in fact, simply a hopelessly vain "wish". In other words, you are anything _but_ serious about this "wish".
How do I know this? Simple. Tell me, _when_ would you— indeed, when _have_ you <b>ever</b> — advocated that, <i>instead of taking the immediately politically expedient course,</i> as you continue to do here and now, those in positions of power place in priority <i> "these and many other aspects of our political fundamentals needing] radical reform" </i>?
My guess is that the honest answer is: "Never."
I’m betting you’ve _always_ advocated doing the immediately politically expedient thing at the expense of taking on what are larger, more deep-rooted, ills which are the foundation of poisoning corruption of the entire political system. Then, as now, you’d have answered at any given moment in the past, when urged that reform of these fundamental ills be made a first-priority, the same things you’re telling me above:
"<i>Ain’t gonna happen, so I don’t know what it is that you’re ranting about.</i>"
which makes of your claimed "wish" just so much bogus and empty bullshit.
citing you again:
"Say it outright: Do you want to sacrifice healthcare reform if passing it means using parliamentary maneuvering? Is that your point? If not, what do all your rants about corruption have to do with the issue at hand? All I get out of it is that you’d rather feel "pure" than be sullied by dirty fighting for some small measure of economic justice.
and here:
"Do you want to sacrifice healthcare reform if passing it means using parliamentary maneuvering?"
You leave "Parliamentary maneuvering" undefined and I’m not going to define that _for_ you.
I don’t oppose honest use of the rules of the House and Senate or negotiating skilfully with one’s political opponents (including those within one’s own party!)–rather than, as it seems to me has been done most of the time so far, clumsily and foolishly and in a manner that is simply self-defeating and self-destructive.
Instead, I’ll say this: believe it or not, there really are things which surpass in importance the passage of this health-care reform bill. I fear, however, that within the Obama administration there is hardly anyone who sincerely acts like he or she really believes that.
What could possibly be more important? First, taking care to avoid doing <i>even more</i> deep and long-lasting destructive harm to the tattered vestiges of democratic institutions and, second, actual renewal and further advancement of real open and effective democratic institutions, of which there now remains almost nothing.
The same interests which oppose health-care reform or, say, reform of high finance as Wall Street has been practicing it, also welcome every occasion to do greater deep and long-lasting harm to the crumbling foundations of "democracy"—a thing which exists now in name only.
It’s true that, for those just-mentioned interests, defeating health-care reform (no bill at all is, of course, a full victory for them) or any effective reform of investment finance would be a great "plum". But beyond these, what they would really prize is the further destruction of democratic institutions so that there remains simply nothing of any effective opposition. That goal is really not far away. And as long as you, Obama and others resign yourselves to the thoroughly corrupt system now in place rather than, <i>at a minimum,</i> placing on some sort of "second track" what amounts to a fully-coherent and carefully-planned program for extensive and long-term reversal of the destruction of our democratic institutions,</i> you, Obama and others like you actually materially aid these corrupting interests bring closer the day when nothing at all remains of genuine political give-and-take, when all is completely a put-up job, a sham where there isn’t any real opposition at all to an
all-powerful corporate-state.
citing you:
"…what do all your rants about corruption have to do with the issue at hand? All I get out of it is that you’d rather feel "pure" than be sullied by dirty fighting for some small measure of economic justice."
They have this to do with it: I favor _real_ fights, not the sort of botched bullshit we’ve seen so far from Obama & Co., where, instead of taking the fight straight to the opponents, Obama immediately starts by stating _vaguely_ a number concessions, what he’s prepared to "settle for" and leaving even that as something that’s subject to being pushed farther and farther back from what he’d like in a result. And, in that light, if what Obama has worked to achieve so far in health-care reform proves to have been mainly a failure, then, at a minimum, I want that failure to serve all of us as a valuable lesson from which mistakes we can profit in a fresh attempt—which should come <i>without delay</i>. Because, you see (or maybe you don’t), the gross errors which the Clinton administration committed have _not_ been profitably used, nor from them advantages learned, taken and applied in ways that strike me in the current efforts. (though this was the intention from various public pronouncements early on).
This would necessarily involve Obama’s robbing his opponents of their still-all-important advantage of a general public which is simply politically clueless. Obama cannot today even think about the strategic value of appeals to an alert, aware and effectively informed public opinion of any significant size which might give his policy initiatives invaluable support. The reason he can’t should be obvious: no such public exists; and, no matter what, he or others may claim to the contrary, the efforts so far to redress this lack have ranged from nil to pitifully inadequate.
My rants about corruption have this to do with the current legislative battles in the House and Senate:
we—you and I and the rest of the general public, both the best-informed and the least-informed as well as Obama and all his administration have been saps and suckers for allowing a completely broken political system to persist so long in such corruption. And as long as we continue as we have, we’ll remain saps and suckers—following your utterly bankrupt and hopeless assertions that effective reform at a fundamental level as I urge, simply "<i>Ain’t gonna happen</i>, in your own words.
If that is really the case, then we really might as well (as indeed is probably the case anyway!) withdraw all our military forces from Iraq, Afghanistan, and, indeed, everywhere else in the world where U.S. forces are based. Their presence is truly pointless and meaningless since we have for every practical purpose simply given up completely on any worthwhile idea of democracy. And, therefore, all the lives risked and lost, all the money spent, all the effort made, is truly and completely for nothing, utterly wasted.
As amazing as it may seem, all indications that I can see are that Obama himself does not really grasp and understand this signal fact. He acts as though he can at one and the same time treat the foundations of democratic institutions as things of secondary importance without also instilling in the public—who, whatever else they can or can’t grasp can certainly grasp this much—the firm belief that their entire political system is a sham and a fraud, that even its most senior officials don’t really believe in it or take it seriously.
Whether he recognizes it or not, when he approaches his work as he has been doing, this is the message he sends so clearly in ways both subtle and not so subtle. The world of corporate power, though quite as aware of these things as anyone else, doesn’t really much give a damn as long as their power and privileges go on advancing. On that, too, I think we’re agreed.
There’s is so much to cover though in presenting anything resembling a comprehensive answer to so broad a question as you put to me. I can’t really hope to fully treat the myriad aspects or even mention them all in a post such as this. All I can do is try, as I have here, to give you a preliminary and general idea of what I’m driving at.
And, so, there you have it such as it is.
