It’s “Throw the bums out!!!” time in America.
Tick-tock, tock-tick. Time is speeding up and the political pendulum swings ever faster as a result. Whoever is seen as being “in power” will be kicked out of power in the next election because the “power” is fucking up royally in every direction. Can’t solve the economic mess without ending the economic imperialist wars that fuel the American infrastructure; can’t end the wars without sending the country even further into economic chaos.
UH oh!!!
Caught between a rock and a hard place, only a Catch 23 Party will be able to save the day.
The Dem presidential candidate in 2012 will be the one who best establishes a publicly perceived adversarial relationship with the Republicans. It doesn’t have to be real…in fact it almost assuredly will not be real…all that will be needed is the perception of such a reality as trance-hyped by the newsmedia.
Win, lose or draw, that is the only way that the Dems can field a viable candidate without losing a substantial part of the electorate to 3rd…or even 4th or 5th…parties.
Obama cannot do this. It’s too late. He has already signaled his plan to continue trying to pacify the increasingly rightist Republican Party, and he will be gone in 2012. It won’t work. No matter how far right he travels, the Ratpubs will move further. Someone else will run….probably Hillary Clinton, despite her current protestations of innocence.
Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
Meanwhile, her other mouths try to run Obama out of office.
Schoen, Caddell: Obama Should Do One Term
Sunday, 14 Nov 2010 05:47 PM
Two leading Democratic strategists have concluded that President Barack Obama should not seek re-election in 2012 – in order to be a great president who delivers on his promise of change that he made in 2008. In an op-ed in The Washington Post, Douglas Schoen and Patrick Caddell argue that Obama will produce only gridlock in the next two years if he governs with one eye on re-election.
Why?
“It is clear, we believe, that the president has largely lost the consent of the governed,” they write. “The midterm elections were effectively a referendum on the Obama presidency. And even if it was not an endorsement of a Republican vision for America, the drubbing the Democrats took was certainly a vote of no confidence in Obama and his party. The president has almost no credibility left with Republicans and little with independents.”
Like dat.
Read on.
Another prediction:
If the DemRats and RatPubs continue to merge towards the center…a merge that now consists almost entirely of rightward movement from the Dems…there will be at least four viable presidential candidates in 2012 from four separate parties.
Maybe even five.
The middle parties…Dems and Rats…advocating virtually indistinguishable goals dressed up as “differences” that are really mostly window dressing and hype. (The real centrist party…The DemocRatpublicans)
And left and right wing parties.
Right? Palin. (The Rats …with the willing help of the centrist media…will centrify her out of contention well before the convention. But there’s money to be had for an independent run. The same money that has inflated the Tea Party movement. Bet on it.)
Left? Who knows? Are there any truly “leftist” candidates with country-wide clout? I don’t see any, myself. Maybe Soros knows.
Plus a possible wild card…an independent Bloomberg run. Bloomberg is neither a centrist, a leftist or a rightist but rather a corporatist. He believes in the power of money and the money of power. He is almost totally an evolutionary elitist in the sense that he favors the successful…as measured by earnings…over the unsuccessful.
This approach has worked very, very well in NYC over the past 10 years or more as long as you are not one of the losers. There is simply no recession whatsoever going on in almost all parts of the three most prosperous boroughs of NYC…Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. Nothing but continuing…and still expanding…growth and gentrification. This is quite clearly his vision for the whole the U.S. of A. The question remains whether this sort of movement can work over an entire country if there is no convenient place in which to store the losers of such a game. The losers of the NYC gentrification surge have been shunted off into appalling ghettoes in smaller cities up and down the Hudson, in New Jersey and in the rapidly failing working class suburbs of Long Island.
The comic genius Steven Wright once asked the magic question “If you had everything…where would you put it?”
Well…if a group of people “had” everything…where would they put those who had nothing?
There are only two answers.
1-Into other countries, selected “loser” states and/or prisons…prison countries, prison states…a massive exodus of the losers much like the waves of immigration that stocked America. A “Back to Africa/Back to South/Central/Caribbean America/Throw out the illegal aliens” movement?
It could happen.
The next Australia?
Maybe West Virginia or Nebraska?
Like dat.
Or of course:
2-Into the grave. (That could happen, too. Hitler tried it. So did Stalin. Some say that this is the real, evolutionarily logical reason for wars. Herd thinning. But…cain’t have no more wars like that. Too risky in a nuclear sense. What to do, what to do? UH oh!!!)
Bloomberg.
The Malthusian party.
Watch.
He has the money to do it, all by himself. Plus more corporate money will flow his way if he enters the fray.
The herd will be thinned.
Watch.
As the committed DemRat and RatPub votes fall past the 30% mark in a “Throw the bums out!!!” world…down as far as 20% or even lower…that sort of movement will leave an electoral vacuum that could be exploited by either the right or some sort of Brave New World creature like Bloomberg.
Miranda in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”.
O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in’t!
Exploited right into the White House.
Watch.
But first…fasten your seatbelts.
Whatever happens, it’s going to be a very bumpy ride.
Bet on that as well.
AG
As you will.
As you must.
To paraphrase the divine Dylan Thomas:
That force?
“Progress.”
Survival of the fittest done up and left the building.
For a while.
But…it’s always waiting outside the house.
Bet on that as well.
Sweet dreams…
AG
I wish I had bookmarked the article, but I recall reading somewhere recently that we may be facing something similar to what Japan has experienced since its lost decade(s) began: a great deal of instability and in our system that will translate into constantly changing majorities in one or both houses in Congress and a revolving door of one-term Presidents. Each cycle we’ll be bombarded with promises of change and an improving economy, only to find that after the obligatory elections are over, nothing of substance changes, except perhaps for the worse. So the meet the new bums, same as the old bums – all to be thrown out again at the next convenient opportunity.
I know that all sounds terribly pessimistic. I’m pretty optimistic though – the world won’t end. That’s the good news.
Greetings Mr. Gilroy. I was in total agreement with your observations concerning the demise of the American two party systems until you got on the Bloomberg express. It will suffice to say that I disagree on your potential power of a Bloomberg presidential bid. However, I am writing this comment to address my opinions as the underlying cause of all the turmoil socially and politically in all things American.
It is my belief that this process that we are living through was started many decades ago in 1942, which I trace to the highly controversial publication by Philip Wylie of his book, titled “Generation of Vipers”. IMHO the public outrage and venom created by the appearance of this book effectively masked its initial most shocking blow of iconoclastic material hurled against the greatest institutional pillars of American society. I believe that Wylie effectively started the initial American iconoclastic movement which slowly grew during the immediate postwar years first morphing into a powerful literary vehicle ripe for artistic interpretation. The escalation of the iconoclastic nature of the movement emerged in different compelling forms over the decades starting with Jack Kerouac’s “Beat Generation” (that even claimed the cartoonist Al Capp as a follower for a brief time), to the genius of Mort Saul’s new creation of stand up comedy in the late 1950’s. This driving underground literary force was transformed into a powerful social force by the domestic turbulence created by the Vietnam War and the deadly grip of its military conscription on America’s youth. The national anti-war movement socially legitimized many of the anti-institutional iconoclastic viewpoints that would have been considered unthinkable in American society back in the early 1940’s.
The rebellious behavior of the 1960’s Hippies sought to transform the violent anger of the anti-war protests into an atmosphere of love and tranquility wafting on the breezes of freshly burning incense and other herbs. However the iconoclastic attitudes and expressions of the hippies increased in emphasis regardless of the profuse smiles and flowers.
Simultaneously with the American iconoclasm spreading throughout society, an actual industrial change was mirroring the social change already happening throughout America. Proceeding almost at the same pace as the literary iconoclastic movement, American business was drastically changing the organizational structures of its industrial institutions. This new phenomena consisted of conglomerating industrial institutions whose names were synonymous with American history. Many of the corporations acquiring these American business icons were actually super-sized business interests located in foreign countries. In the aftermath of these acquisitions many of our hallowed American icons simply joined other groups within a huge panoply of international business
.
Americans were told that international merger and acquisition of American business was good for the nation, especially when complimented by government structured trade pacts. However the American labor force remained filled with unease as it was forced to deal with “Downsizing”, “Rifts”, and other mass layoff schemes over the years. Labor was also forced to endure additional loss of employment caused by the record number of “Corporate Raiders” brought into long established American corporations as CEOs by greedy corporate board members.
Included within this dismal social picture is the continuous fall of the greatest American icon of all, the American church. Sexual scandals have decimated the Catholic Church along with some very well known Fundamentalist church leaders. The net result of these events has been in effect an American spiritual iconoclasm.
Today following the aftermath of the greatest global financial recession in modern history, it should be of little surprise that the current generation of American citizens has no viable American institutions that they can put their faith in for guidance leading to the restoration of a vibrant stable nation.
The current anxiety sweeping the country is fueled by American’s impatience with the length of time that it is taking for a new American social order to naturally arise from the iconic ashes of the old institutions. Many voters thought that Barack Obama would be the one to somehow preside over the raising of the new American Phoenix and they rushed to the polls to secure his bid for the presidency. Now two years later, disappointment fills the atmosphere. The magic hasn’t happened and the iconoclasm continues unabated throughout America. If anything it appears to be expanding in ferocity, and many wonder if their personal survival will be possible in the coming years.
The American Iconoclasm in all respects is a social phenomenon and as such the anthropological experience indicates that it will run its course until that “shining city on a hill”, the complex of new American institutions arises to take their place in the America of the 21st century. In that day the “old things will all entirely pass away”.
peace….
Bet on it.
Just commenting upon it from up close and personal experience.
It has neither run me over nor has it made me rich. I’m not even on the same set of tracks, to tell you the truth.
But I do recognize a powerful locomotive when I see one.
AG