Author: CrapIsKing

“General David Petraeus, on a trip to Germany, refused to confirm directly a New York Times report, but said there had long been doubts about one alleged Taliban peace overture towards the Afghan government.

“There was scepticism about one of these all along and it may well be that scepticism was well-founded,” he told a press briefing following talks with German Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg.” – AFP

Well, don’t be coy, Gen. Petraeus – was the skepticism about the putative Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Mansour or not? If not, why mention it at all?

If so, give yourself an extra star for kind of / almost being on the case, and then retire – the only honorable thing you can do short of seppuku – for giving away money, time and lives on a dude you doubted was the real thing.

I posted this yesterday in response to Booman’s question as to whether or not we were dealing with a rational force in the modern-day Republican Party:

“One of the signs that much of our current Republican Party is in fact fascist is the primacy of the political: the first question they ask is whether or not something will benefit them politically. Whether a proposal benefits or harms the nation is not a consideration. This is what turned Republican Romneycare into Communist Obamacare. They have abandoned evidence and reason for rhetorical opportunism – hence the constant hypocrisy – and their illiterate wish-projection onto the Bible, the Constitution and history. They value ignorance in the population, as evidenced by Palin-worship and climate denial.

They call themselves conservatives, but movement conservatives are in fact right-wing radicals – fascists. They do not care what shape the country is in that they take over, as long as they take over. Neither the news media nor the poobahs of the Democratic Party have caught on to their utter amorality. The news media think of this as being clever and do not see the disaster this strategy is leading us directly into. Democratic leaders are still trying to pretend it is the old “Will the Honorable Gentleman yield?” days. They can see better, but they don’t know what to do about it.”

Applying the word “fascist” to our right-wing opponents is considered unhelpful at best and irrational at worst. By and large, its use is about as welcome as conspiracy theories are in today’s domesticated left. But it applies here, so let me expand.

Fascism confuses a lot of people, including academics. Most political ideologies, from democracy to communism, have tried to state their goals fairly honestly, whether it be Mill’s `greatest good for the greatest number,’ or Marx’s `from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.’

Fascism does not do this, for a very simple reason: in an age of at least formal democracy, plainly stating the objectives of fascism doesn’t work too well with the common voter. As Peter Viereck (Metapolitics: The Roots of the Nazi Mind) says, the aim of any truly conservative radical movement is to install an aristocracy. Since they cannot openly state that they intend to erect a class of inherited political privilege (and do some looting too), fascism needs a front organization to do its work for it. Think of the actual fascist party as being the aboveground advertising agency and customer service representatives – and enforcement arm – for belowground interests as they seek to install themselves in power.

This approach dictates a number of things:

1. that the fascist party temporarily conceal the truth about what it is trying to do –  end democracy – until the time is right; in place of sincere political proposals, a fascist party in opposition spins out a daily load of opportunistic rhetoric to constantly `win the day’ and erode respect for the current system and its adherents;
2. that the fascist party be “in” electoral democratic politics, but not “of” them; i.e. that it be “metapolitical,” “above” all of the “petty partisan squabbling” which is, after all, the day-to-day face of a functioning democracy; thus, while participating in democratic forms, the fascist party considers democracy to be illegitimate except to give it power;
3. that the nascent aristocracy will permit the fascist party to rule and take its share of spoils, while retaining as much of its desired prerogatives as it is able to do;
4. this means that fascism is by its nature a constantly-negotiated, unstable coalition of some of the very rational “better” people on the one hand, and an organized bunch of thugs, lunatics and misfits on the other;
5. all of this means that the aboveground fascists – the Party per se – should be effective and still be deferential to forms of ambition and prestige beyond just raw political power.

Let’s take these up one by one:

1. One of the things that has most confused academics about fascism is its stated ideology: it doesn’t really have one. Most agree that it venerates war and surrounds itself with clouds of superheated nationalist rhetoric, but after that, it is difficult to come up with much of anything beyond a laundry list of rhetorical tendencies. Maybe it calls itself `socialist.’ Maybe `conservative.’ Maybe `Christian.’ That is determined by what is currently selling rhetorically, not by any ideological commitment. Some scholars have tried so hard to define fascist ideology and found so little, that they have come to the conclusion that fascism hardly has existed at all. (e.g. Stanley Payne, A History of Fascism). It did and does exist, but it cannot say why with any honesty. This is because:
2. the fascist party’s sole raison d’être is to take power. It may generate lots of rhetoric about “embodying the will of the people” better than democracy and blah, blah, blah, but in fact, it is a virus which exists to exist and reproduce. And loot and install a new class of better people.
3. A fascist party cannot come to power without a lot of money and other encouragement from some of the most powerful people in a society, and in finding them, it discovers that it has acquired a silent senior partner in the aristocratie manquée.
4. Fascism in opposition is a relatively stable coalition – everybody needs everybody else to take power, but as soon as it gains and consolidates power, it becomes volatile. Once in power, all of the thugs, lunatics and misfits of the insurgent party try to loot what they want, which sometimes means cutting other people out, or messing up a good business climate. From the senior partners’ point of view, some of the thugs, lunatics and misfits of the insurgent party need to be culled and replaced with reliable bureaucrats who will set the looting on a more businesslike footing.
5. This is the Masters’ Great Calculus, of course: finding the right front men. The same is true to some extent in a democracy, (C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite), but with fascism, this is especially tricky, since they have to be pliable people who nevertheless are able to take over and be seen to run a formerly-functioning democracy by getting enough common citizens to act against their own rights and freedom: a tall order that requires some really good rhetoric and occasional violence. It really helps the senior partners once in power if the front office is deferential by nature or training to norms of prestige. If a title of nobility or a really nice castle is all someone wants in trade for destroying unions, keeping the population quiet, and letting corporations make lots of money, it’s little enough.

The last point aims directly at the form of fascism known as “clerical fascism,” where fascism is in alliance with organized religion. This is the more common and more stable form of fascism, at least in its 20th century European form. The Roman Catholic Church has never really warmed up to democracy much, and it made common cause across Europe with insurgent (or in many cases merely resurgent) aristocrats and fascist parties alike from Hungary to Portugal.

But it’s the Republican Party of the United States that I am claiming has a strong fascist element to it. And here we have our own mostly-“Protestant” politicized fundamentalists, demonstrating the truth of what Sinclair Lewis predicted – that fascism would come to the US carrying a flag and a cross. Religion – and alcohol and drugs – are the opiates of the masses. People are just more malleable when under the influence, and the Republicans are hardly the first to notice this. The Republican Party incorporated this element of clerical fascism in 1988, when George H.W. Bush invited the politicized fundamentalists to replace college-educated Republican women as the foot soldiers of the Party. By 1996, Ralph Reed was saying that Bob Dole was the “last moderate we will accept” as the nominee. This process drove the Eisenhower Republicans out of the Republican Party, and eventually into the Democratic Party, which they now run. (Another story for another day) Bush, Jr. is a politicized fundamentalist, and recall that the former maverick John McCain went and kissed the ring of both Falwell and Robertson before he got the nomination.

The people who run the Republican Party are not stupid or irrational. Far from it. They can read the demographic handwriting on the wall. And yet they continue to do all they can to alienate minorities and outsiders who will soon vastly outnumber whites. Some people look at this with confidence and see a coming permanent Democratic majority. I look at it and listen to the increasingly violent Republican rhetoric and realize that something is going to have to give. Either the Republicans are going to have to walk a lot of this rhetoric way back, or their adherence to democracy is pretty well over. Which do you think is more likely, given the makeup of the party?’

To reinforce this point, consider the fact that a lot of Republicans do not grant legitimacy to any but a Republican government. The Tea Partiers kept screaming about health care reform thwarting the will of the people, as if Democrats had not won huge consecutive victories. And in the 111th Congress, the Republicans opposed everything the Democrats did merely for the political sake of opposing, not because Romneycare and Obamacare weren’t the same damned things. Like Nazis in the Reichstag, they were in democracy, but not of democracy, and showed a real party militant solidarity in being so. Everyone hates Congress already and it’s going to get worse. That’s only bad for your party if you think Congress should continue to exist.

The problem of the front office people, the political front men and women, has been approached in a very interesting way. Rather than settle on one charismatic leader (I think the German Masters came to regret their decision to do this), they have raised up a chorus of thugs, lunatics and misfits to sing democracy’s swansong for them. For the most part, their demands are not excessive or even very interesting: they just want to be Governor of Alaska for a while, watch their daughters do well on Dancing with the Stars, and maybe be president for a while too; make a lot of money, tell racist “jokes” in public, and get access to little girls and pharmaceuticals; have a nice job on Fox; or maybe just handcuff a reporter or step on some hippie girl’s head. Not very threatening. To the aristocracy.

Many fascist movements have foundered before they had a real chance to install an aristocracy. This one looks as if it has a better idea. The big question is what the military will do. Right now, the Masters don’t appear to have thought this one out yet, as they have managed to alienate the military more from their chosen vehicle than it has been in many decades. But they have lots of resources, and I’m sure they’re working on it.

Nearly everyone agrees that Democrats are awful at messaging. But we are blessed with the lowest collection of kooks, crooks and morons ever assembled under a single party banner as our opposition this cycle and that cold fact is only beginning to dawn on voters in some places and remains unknown in many others.

We expect the media to point these things out for us, but this shows a terrible misunderstanding of what the media understand their mission to be in this day and age. First, they are not going to dig ANYTHING up on any candidate, no matter how easy it may be. They must be fed stories like baby birds, stories which are hunted, captured, killed, chewed, partly digested and regurgitated into their mouths for them. The GOP understands this. Most Democratic Communications Directors and oppo researchers seem not to. Fix this.

Second, the media have no memories. Everything blows over. Our politicians should never resign in the first light of embarrassment. Governors renting whores to screw is not worse than Senators renting whores to dress them in diapers and watch them poop into them. We should never avoid doing the politically right thing for fear of one bad cycle of “news.” Too often, we let a urine stain appear on the front of our trousers and then fail to do the right thing anyway. It’s pathetic: Bush tax cuts for the poor and middle class, but not for the rich BEFORE the election. `Nuff said.

Third, if there is any contention, the media will not sort out the facts from the fiction. They will say “Republicans say the earth is flat. Democrats dispute it. Film at 11.” That’s it. They are not arbiters anymore. They see their role as being precisely what Edward R. Murrow dismissed as “balancing the truth with a lie.”  At a minimum, we need to dispute every Republican story immediately, even if it is cold and accurate. And maybe put a hold on the press conference for a few days and see how it feels then.

The obverse of item three should be pretty obvious, but I have not seen it much used. Democrats remain outraged that Republicans LIE! Well, duh. But the only reason Republican lies fall on fertile soil is because the media wouldn’t know a fact from an allegation if it walked up, shook their hands, introduced itself and showed some ID.

As I say, we are blessed with the biggest bunch of kooks, crooks and morons the nation has ever seen and a media that can’t sort anything out beyond Republican vs. Democrat. So help them out. When you put together a message, stop asking yourself, “But is it true? Are those facts we can prove?” Instead, ask yourself, “Is that a good message? Does it sound like something that appeals to voters’ emotions?” And then go with it. If the Republican candidate’s business had some customer complaints, say he defrauded his customers. If her bank depositors got relief from the FDIC, say she got a bailout. And for crying out loud, if he got dressed in diapers by a whore, say so. Out loud. Repeatedly. The fun part is that nearly every one of these assholes has something like that attached to their name. Let him say he wasn’t actually convicted. Let her say that’s not really a bailout. Let him say he’s found Jesus again, so that doesn’t matter. And we need to do it CONSTANTLY, because some of it will stick and some won’t. They’ve been doing it to us for years now. Time to stop playing defense and crying about how UNFAIR it all is.

Stop whining about racism and hypocrisy. These are whiny, loser preaching-to-the-choir messages. Who cares? The media sure don’t, and neither do voters who aren’t already on our side. Everyone is a hypocrite from time to time, and you may notice that racism ain’t exactly dead. But none of that means that most of the voters don’t have other interests that exactly coincide with what Democrats are trying to get done. This ain’t about being right or attracting the pure of heart. It’s about winning. There’s a difference. Republicans know this. Let’s figure it out for ourselves.

Our problem is getting a message that works through a media that is bored to suicide by policy but loves SEX! CRIME! WITCHCRAFT! to low-information voters who keep screwing themselves. So give it to `em. In almost every case, it has the added virtue of being true enough for cable news.

I know, I know: that degrades the national dialogue and puts us down in the mud with the Republicans. Our society was built on reasonable interpretations of demonstrable facts. And wouldn’t it be nice to live in a society like that again? Well guess what: that horse has already left the barn. Any degradation we suffer from getting in the rhetorical mud is as nothing compared to what will happen if we keep standing there helpless like bunnies mesmerized by a cobra.

“I think he looks at the world through, his mom, who was a school teacher, and his dad, who was a physicist or something like that.” “He can’t relate to a guy like me. He can’t relate to a guy whose dad worked all his life.” “If we’re gonna call one side bigoted, we probably gotta look at the other side and say the same thing.” – Rick Sanchez.

Never mind the Elders of Zion stuff. He doesn’t quite lay it out plainly, but Rick Sanchez comes pretty close to expressing some of the stupidity behind the reasons our news media are, in Jon Stewart’s words, “hurting America,” and why uneducated Americans are constantly voting against their self-interest.

First, is the residual working-class resentment / sense of superiority against intellectuals: Sanchez’ dad worked; Stewart’s didn’t because he was just a “physicist or something like that.”

Second, there is the assumption that having been raised among educated people has robbed Stewart of the ability to understand people who are not like him.

Finally comes the assumption that there are two and only two sides to everything, and that it is some sort of law of nature that the two sides are exactly equal and opposite.

Together, they form a closed mental system – I will not call it intellectual, because it sorts without evaluating – that provides poor people with the means to oppress themselves and the media with an excuse to keep hurting America.

There is nothing condescending to the credo I was taught that “all work has dignity,” although the frequent obiter dictum, “even ditch-digging,” carries both a warning against class prejudice and an assumption of one. Sanchez is the one carrying the heavy class prejudice here. Funny because, of course, it is only his own education which put him in the chair at CNN where, presumably, he felt he did some work.

Less well-educated people have probably always salved their sense of inferiority by believing that intellectuals may have knowledge, but lack common sense. Think of George Wallace and his remark about “pointy-headed intellectuals who cain’t park a bicycle straight.” But Sanchez and his ilk have transformed this relatively harmless palliative: education is no longer just a sign of possible dearth of common sense, it is now a guarantee of the inability to understand anything.

Anti-intellectualism has become widespread among uneducated people in America, and feeds right-wing foolishness. When Congressman Paul Broun says that “human induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community,” uneducated people nod sagely. ‘Yes’, they say to themselves, ‘those scientists are constantly trying to hoax me, but I’m too smart for them.’

Sanchez and Broun exemplify the result of the commodification and professionalization of education in America. It used to be that a citizen acquired a liberal education – in any subject, whether physics or English literature – in order to learn how to understand anything and everything better, using one particular subject matter. From the ability to reproduce and measure an hypothesis under experimental conditions to analyzing and evaluating the weight of the evidence, we learned good old Anglo-American empiricism. From this ability to think, one could go on to become a better teacher, writer, business manager, administrator or journalist. In other words, education gave you the ability to ask any question and the tools with which to answer it.

Not anymore. Education is to get you a well-paid job, period. Do English lit majors get paid a lot? No? Well, then you’re stupid to study it. How about physicists? Not really? Dummy. And so, as a stupid dummy who went to college, your education actually proves that you understand less than uneducated people. The cold fact is that everyone is just out for themselves, so of course scientists – and for all I know, English lit majors – are always trying to perpetrate hoaxes which will make them rich. It’s just obvious.

Facts have become a matter of belief. ‘Some people believe the world is round, some don’t. So I guess we’ll never know.’ Journalists were always at the low end of the empirical scale: find two independent sources who say it’s so and write it up before the deadline. But now, they have fallen completely off the scale. Sanchez’ belief that, ‘If we’re gonna call one side something, we probably gotta look at the other side and say the same thing,’ expresses a belief and today’s journalistic professional credo, not a fact based in anything beyond faith. He wants to succeed as a journalist. He doesn’t give a damn about keeping citizens informed of their interests in a democratic republic. All that’s cool with his fellow journalists. He just should have left the Jews out of it.

Run it back the other way: after Republicans impeached Clinton over a blowjob and had the Supreme Court steal an election – and then swung much farther to the irrational right – it could not have been possible for any sentient human being to think that they were going to go post-partisan with any Democrat. The campaign rhetoric responding to media-driven voter ignorance – “I hate the partisan wrangling in Washington” – was fine, but Obama and team appeared to actually believe it was possible. Indeed, on many days, they still seem to believe so.

All of the Chicago School economic crap of the ’80’s, ’90’s and ’00’s – the magic of the marketplace, the tax cuts for the wealthy leading to higher investment in the domestic economy, greater worker productivity automatically leading to higher wages, etc. – led the nation and the world to economic disaster. January, 2009 was a very teachable moment. But almost no one was putting the lesson up on the chalkboard for everyone to see, certainly not the President. Indeed, I see very little indication that anyone has learned the lesson to this day, Republicans, Democrats, business people, or academics. So, plan for more economic disasters not too far down the road.

I just will not accept the idea of a President elected in a landslide – after another landslide two years earlier – and with a solid Democratic majority in both houses as being helpless because of a handful of Senators. On the stimulus bill, pro-stimulus Democrats had the national Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers on their side. Snarky remarks about the “overwhelming support he had in the Senate to double the size of the stimulus” don’t cover up the fact that the coalition in favor of an effective stimulus could have been used to break the back of opposition to an effective stimulus not only from Democrats but from Republicans too. This was not tried. Instead, a one trillion dollar maximum was immediately imposed, and then negotiations with one or two Republicans cut the actual stimulating part of ARRA in half, with a bunch of tax cuts. And no one was left afraid of what a President with a massive mandate and the power of the Presidency could and would do to little politicians who got in the way of what the nation needed. And then they insisted on pay-go, just to make sure everyone’s hands were tied against any further action.

The fact is, any President has tremendous power to accomplish all sorts of things with horse trading, and administrative and executive action without Congressional approval. But no one is afraid of this President. I say again, a leader does not begin policy formulation with what current estimates say would sell now, then compromise that down to half, and then chop it up trying to pass it, and hope it kind of works better than the status quo ante. A leader begins with a policy that is fairly sure to work and then figures out how to make it happen because it is the right policy. This necessitates a coalition with the voters – AS THEY WILL FEEL ON ELECTION DAY – not with the corporations. Obama and the Democrats rejected this path. But now an election is looming and they want prime Dems to come rushing back to them to stave off the loonies on the right – i.e. the Republicans.

But social democrats – FDR Democrats – are no longer welcome in the Democratic Party, except at election time and when their ‘aye’ votes for some dubious piece of legislation are taken for granted on the House and Senate floors. The actions and accomplishments of both Clinton and Obama show the truth of this statement. The center of the Democratic Party has swallowed the Chicago School crapola as fully as the Republicans have – or they have been too intimidated by the mega corporations to say that they reject it and act accordingly. So, actually, in that they are well to the right of Eisenhower, who never believed the proto-Chicago School foolishness of his day.

Massive civil liberties violations under Bush formed another teachable moment, right at the political juncture where the attention of a lot of Ron Paulites could have been gained. Instead, Obama DID ignore his soothing campaign rhetoric here, and so these violations now have the bi-partisan seal of approval, which means they are forever. So, plan for a government which obeys the Constitution if it feels like it, and courts that think that’s OK. Idiots think civil liberties caprice will always be confined to Mohammad and Fatima, but it’s just a question of time now before Hunter and Heather sense the G-men watching them too. Certainly, President Palin will be very grateful for these expanded powers.

The fact is, this nation has been on a seriously wrong track since the 1970’s. We coasted along on the residue of the social democratic post-war boom while undercutting it at every step. It was a crisis of sustained bad policy enabled by greed, incompetence and gutlessness which led to Obama being elected. Everyone sensed the moment: Whew! Another Lincoln, another FDR, just when we need him. Everyone, that is, except Obama and his people. They determined he would be another Buchanan, another Hoover.

So, yes, many prime Dems will probably turn out this election. But after the double dip has been around for a few quarters and 9.5% / 19% unemployment becomes something “we just have to accept,” because those mean Republicans won’t help us, just remember that Obama and the Democrats had a once-in-a-century chance to change the politics of this country by bringing a whole, eager new generation into the Democratic Party, teaching everyone policy rights and wrongs, and enacting policies which demonstrated that government really could fix some things – and then utterly failed to do so.

Those young people who were finally convinced to show up at the ballot box in 2008, convinced of Obama’s progressive politics, will not now transform American politics for the next generation, because most of them will drift into apathy or bitterness at a political system which has no room for real solutions, but plenty of room for whiny excuses. It doesn’t matter whether this opportunity was botched out of conviction, incompetence or fear: a certain level of leadership was required and given what it needed to succeed, and it failed to do so.

But more broadly, social democrats cannot long stay in junior partnership with the Eisenhower Republicans who run the Democratic Party. It simply does not leave the nation with enough policy options which will actually  work. Indeed, the coalition may already have lasted too long, and this may have been our last chance to avert the long-term national disaster the Republicans have in mind for us. Staying home isn’t going to avert the disaster. But going to the ballot box doesn’t seem to do much good either. Even when we win, we act as if we had lost.

Stanley Fish in the Times does his usual backstopping of “rational” journalistic convention, using 9-11 “Truthers” as his foils. ‘Just listen to how crazy these left-wing conspiracy people sound. The right has no monopoly on crazy conspiracy theories.’ He doesn’t bother to refute anything. He just cites what he heard, and lets you agree with how wildly out of touch with reality these people are. He assumes that you are well trained, in this era when use of the accusation “that’s a conspiracy theory” is taken by journalists as an exhaustive and conclusive argument.

Interestingly enough, a scan of today’s news also brings us Pont-Saint-Esprit poisoning: Did the CIA spread LSD?, wherein the BBC presents an ongoing debate between an American investigative journalist (whose work is only quoted in British news sources, of course) and an American scholar over a seeming outbreak of ergotamine poisoning in a French village in 1951 which may or may not have been the result of LSD having been put in bread by the CIA, but where they agree that the official story was almost surely incorrect.

Then we have Claudy bombings cover-up revealed in police report, which reveals collusion between “senior police officers, government ministers and the Catholic hierarchy” to conceal the lead role played by a Catholic priest in a deadly bombing in Ulster in 1972.

Now picture yourself in 1951 saying, “I think the CIA sent everyone in Pont-Saint-Esprit, France on an LSD trip.” Or saying in 1972, “The bombing in Claudy was led by a Catholic priest and the British government and the Catholic Church are covering up for him.” The Stanley Fishes of the day and all of the rest of the “responsible journalists” could have used you as an example of how crazy conspiracy theories are.

Conspiracy is simply planning by two or more people to commit an illegal act. Did the CIA commit an illegal act in Pont-Saint-Esprit in 1951? Who knows? It will almost surely never get into a court of law to be tested. In fact, the CIA – and most conspirators generally – plan it that way. It’s called plausible deniability and coverup. Was it illegal for the Northern Ireland Government to fail to investigate and prosecute Father Chesney for his role in the bombing and use the Catholic Church of Ireland to help cover it up? No, it probably just falls under the heading of prosecutorial discretion. But in both cases, something funny was going on, which might have merited more than a sniff and a sneer from journalists.

For our hard-nosed, skeptical modern journalist, a “conspiracy theory,” especially one regarding the inherently trustworthy powers that be, is by definition ridiculous, and can be demonstrated to be ridiculous merely by calling it a conspiracy theory. But history – a subject about which he is militantly ignorant – says that may not always be the case.

I have no problem with bi-partisanship or even post-partisanship. I think they are lovely ideas, and that it is beneficial to the nation for both parties to find areas of agreement. Although the span of such areas of agreement is much narrower than it has been in the past, they exist. Encouraging science, technology, engineering and mathematics efforts in education, research and development and production is an example of salutary bi-partisanship.

But as Booman’s recent diary “Parties Change Their Character” and simple observation demonstrate, the Republican Party of today bears very little resemblance to the broad-based, diverse Republican Party of the past, including the fairly recent past. Its strength once lay in New England and the Midwest. The states of the Confederacy now form its gravamen. Republicans once actually were the party of fiscal restraint and environmentalism. They are now the party of fiscal fantasy and environmental insanity. The fact that the press has failed to digest these transformations does not alter them.

A successful politician needs two distinct skill sets: campaigning and governing. There is no particular reason why appealing to voters on the one hand and enacting and implementing policy on the other should be found in one person. Most voters simply do not pay much attention to policy proposals, debates, votes, or bureaucratic implementation. They have other things going on in their lives, and really only have much political power for the four minutes of democracy they get every two years or so. Beyond that, politicians frequently have good reason (to them) not to explain clearly and understandably what is at stake with a particular policy. The vast majority of voters have not been well-trained in receiving and evaluating this information. And, even if the first two necessary conditions applied, our press would rather drink poison than explain the content of policy debates while they are occurring.

So when voters express a desire for bi-partisanship; when they say they are fed up with the “partisan wrangling in Washington,” they are coming from a place of profound ignorance by and large. They are unable and unwilling to identify the sources and causes of partisan wrangling, and it benefits sleazy politicians, lazy voters and useless media outlets to maintain a vague sense of resentment with all politicians in general. So, there is a certain benefit to politicians of both parties to make appeals to bi-partisanship at election time, the outsider appeal, the post-partisan stance, the “clean up the mess in Washington” rhetoric.

But honoring consistency in politics by insisting that politicians follow through on their campaign promises is even less rewarding than insisting on consistency in our colleagues, friends and loved ones. Situations change. New information comes to light. Let’s face it: people exaggerate, shade the truth and flat out lie for their own perceived benefit. And the fact is, voters don’t really care whether a politician follows through on campaign promises nearly as much as whether or not their lives are going OK at election time – about results.

So, I have no problem with Obama making cooing noises about post-partisanship during the campaign. I think that hiring the reasonable dross of elected Republicans like Ray LaHood, John McHugh and Jim Leach was a really good idea to show non-insane Republicans that Eisenhower Republicans are now Democrats. And I am aware that Obama carries an extra burden of caution no previous president has carried. A lot of people are scared of aggressive-sounding African-American men, and he needs to be perceived to be treading lightly in political struggles. But voters form their perceptions of a politician by his or her words and public actions, not their private actions to get results.

Ronald Reagan was not popular because his policies were popular. Go look at the contemporary polls: they weren’t nearly as popular as Reagan was himself. Reagan was perceived as a trustworthy good guy because of his well-delivered words which soothed and stirred Americans’ emotions. He seemed like a nice man, like your favorite uncle. But behind closed doors, he was defunding the left, degrading the environment, eroding the effectiveness of the federal bureaucracy, helping to destroy broad-based American prosperity, and succeeding in partisan knife-fighting as hard as he could. It was the combination of good-guy image and vicious, effective partisanship which made him a transformational figure, not some vague, soothing non-partisanship.

After the impeachment of Bill Clinton over complete nonsense; after the theft of the 2000 election by a suborned Supreme Court; after Bush Jr. said everyone who opposed his disastrous wars was with the terrorists, only a disastrously naive politician could believe in the substance of bi-partisanship, that post-partisanship had any meaning in governance. I hear people say we couldn’t know the extent of Republican opposition to any agenda which wasn’t their own, that Obama had promised post-partisanship in the election and he had to try it, or it would cost him too much politically.

Bullshit.

I have said that the Democrats needed to emulate Reagan: hold a vote on an important, necessary piece of legislation, lose, identify and publicly shame opponents, make necessary compromises, and then hold a revote, and that this would have scared opponents sufficiently that opposition – especially when just one or two more Senators were needed on the final votes – would have been pushed into a corner. Objections have been raised that this would have resulted in a loss of momentum, that the press would have buried Obama’s agenda before he got out of the box.

Return with me now to those thrilling days of early 2009. The economy is in freefall. Big banks are dead but too dumb to fall over. Business is panicking. Economists estimate that about $1.4 trillion will be necessary to stimulate the economy back into operation. President Obama in conjunction with Pelosi and Reid brings out a stimulus proposal for $2 trillion of broad spending across the economy. The three of them stand on a stage, hands crossed while Warren Buffett addresses the nation about the urgency of adopting this proposal. Obama, Pelosi and Reid nod their agreement. Republicans and Blue Dogs scream that it is too much, it will bankrupt the nation, it’s socialism, it’s communism, it’s fascism. A vote is held. The measure loses in both houses. President Obama appears on stage, a grave look on his face. In his lovely low voice he pleads with the opposition to put aside partisan differences and address the economic crisis. He smiles and assures the nation that ways can be found to bring all Americans into harness again. In the days that follow, lobbyists from the Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers (please remember that both core Republican organizations backed the stimulus loudly against Republican opposition) are very busy explaining the political facts in Republican and Blue Dog offices. Reid and Pelosi reluctantly agree to lower the amount to $1.4 trillion and to add some tax cuts for the middle class and small businesses. Another vote is held in both houses. I guarantee it would have passed overwhelmingly.

And now, what would the situation be? Obama would be the new post-partisan President. Business would feel included in Democratic Party decision-making. We would have a stimulus package large enough to accomplish its mission. Everyone would be seen to have had input to the final legislation. And Republicans and Blue Dogs would be terrified of screwing around with the President’s agenda.

But I don’t think these people are or were naive. I think they are enacting almost exactly the moderate Republican agenda they want to enact. Too bad their aren’t any moderate Republicans around any more to help them.

Immigration is an anomalous issue. The “left” position is really right, and the “right” position is really left. Both parties publicly espouse positions contrary to many of their most important political contributors. Republicans are all up in arms about it. It makes Democrats sing encomia to their immigrant grandparents. But they’re both merely pandering.

Illegal immigration and some legal immigration (e.g. H1B visas) persist for a very simple reason: to keep down the pay of American workers. Republicans love to say that these are jobs that Americans won’t do. And they’re right: for what hotels want to pay their chambermaids, lawn services their gardeners, software companies their programmers, hospitals their nurses and techs, property managers their janitors, and packing plants their meatpackers, it’s hard to find US citizens who will fill the jobs.

Nationwide, low pay and long hours made it difficult for hospitals to find RN’s and techs. But rather than encourage more Americans to become health care workers or advance their skills with higher pay and educational benefits, many have simply decided to staff up with foreigners at much lower pay. Illegal immigration permitted meatpackers to shut down their unionized plants. Meatpacking is now done at feedlots, manned by illegals behind big fences. Many lawn services and property management companies haven’t even pretended to look for American employees for decades. Don’t want to pay American programmers and engineers what their education says they’re worth? Tell the Feds you can’t find enough Americans with those “special skills” and apply for a stack of H1B visas. Republican administrations (and the Clinton Administration) have always been very generous about this problem. You can see where the party of, for and by corporate wealth would actually favor porous borders. This is another issue where they will huff and puff, but Republicans with two brain cells to rub together are not going to blow any houses down.

There is no reason these jobs shouldn’t pay a decent living wage, and no reason educated workers shouldn’t make a good living. Every other economically advanced country in the world tries to protect the jobs of its workers. Not ours. We send as many production jobs overseas as we can, as quickly as we can. But some jobs just can’t be off-shored. It is not racist to protect the economic security of your citizens. Americans will take these service jobs if they pay a living wage. But they don’t, and the only way to make most of them pay a decent living wage is to unionize them.

And that’s where the rub for Democrats comes in. Of course Democrats want to make recent immigrants happy. They want their votes, and, right-wingers being who they are, want to make this about race, and not about economics. But it is about economics, and smart immigrants sure won’t want their kids to be chambermaids and gardeners and meatpackers at these wages.

The difference between the two parties is that, in the end, Republicans will not desert their real base, the profit-hungry corporations that hate unions. As with abortion, they will find a way just barely not to do what their voter base wants them to do.

Democrats on the other hand will betray their working class base faster than you can say Tim Geithner. Notice which unions left the AFL-CIO because it is too much in thrall to the Democrats: the unions representing the janitors and nurses like SEIU.

Racism confuses liberals. Don’t think smart Republicans don’t know this. It is nice to run to defend Mexicans and Filipinas and Indians from racism. But the American worker’s right to a decent wage is what is at issue here, and has been for 35 years and until Democrats start defending that rather than predatory corporations, expect more “racism” from precisely those Americans one of whose parents made a living wage at a service or production job, but who are themselves unable to attain economic security, even when both work.

Democrats keep bringing reason and logic to a knife fight, and being surprised when they get stabbed repeatedly. They seem to lack an understanding of the ways they can take advantage of the levers of power to do things which are perfectly legal and ethical, which nevertheless benefit them politically. Hardball by bureaucrats, of the sort which Franklin Roosevelt’s executive branch played so well.

It was deeply discouraging to watch adult child of an alcoholic Bill C. reward his enemies and punish his friends for eight years. To watch Obama cover up Bush’s crimes – and extend some – is infuriating.

Prosecution, regulation and oversight are wonderful ways to play hardball with mine owners, especially guilty-as-hell ones. Obama’s Justice Department and Mine Safety and Health Administration need to make a big time example of Coal Baron Don Blankenship, owner of Massey Coal and Republican money man. It’s not just that he’s a soulless and corrupt man who needs to be brought to heel. As such, he is an important supporter of the Republican Party and its anti-worker, anti-regulation agenda. His individual contributions to the national GOP total $92k lifetime. In the 2006 West Virginia state elections, he spent $1,155,000 in independent expenditures, and $1,905,000 on electioneering expenses.

Take his money. Send him to prison. Humiliate him. Make him a media example of a Republican corporate bad guy. And when Republicans complain – and they will – smile and insist no malice is involved, only justice. And then ask them what they would like to defend about Don Blankenship’s record. In case anyone feels queasy, remember the bastards had a grand jury drip on the aforementioned Bill C. for a solid year. The fact that a righteous prosecution and putting the regulatory screws down also help de-fund the far right and loosen a state’s politics up a little bit is just a bonus.

The State of West Virginia has been in political thrall to Don Blankenship for years. You had better believe that $3,000,000 such as Blankenship spent on state elections in 2006 goes a long way in West Virgina. The state is not without strategic importance. It is one of the most heavily unionized in the nation, but voted for Bush against Gore in 2000, which would have won the election for Gore without a chance for the Supreme Court to play electoral college. Here is a place to stand with the unions and the people of West Virginia against Don Blankenship and the Republicans. And then we need to get in the habit of doing this every chance we get.

To recap: Roughly speaking, I think we have three main political problems in this country: 1) that too many people with a megaphone talk crap; 2) that too many citizens believe crap; and 3) the ratio of crap to non-crap in the public dialogue is much too high.

I have reformulated the last one of these three political problems as follows: 1) our news media are broken; 2) civic education is broken; 3) CIVIL leadership is broken.

As ever, there is no support for my assertions and there is lots more wrong with civil leadership than just this.

Today, we deal with a broken civil leadership, the people who shape and run our republic.

3) The ratio of crap to non-crap in the public dialogue is much too high and civil leadership is broken.

a. Overturning of the Fairness Doctrine has been part of a general trend to turn the media from something that people do because they want to into something that people do because they want to make money. This accounts for much of the media’s contribution to the general decline in caring about the country. As with all business in the US, the last 35 years of the conservative ascendancy has corporatized many family media businesses. This helps set a price for crap as commodity in the public dialogue, and the crap has Rushed in.

b. This is a piece of a general decline in noblesse oblige among America’s wealthy. With corporatization has also come a professionalization of business. Fewer people take an undergraduate degree in Liberal Arts from a good private college and then run a family business than used to. More take an MBA and become manager at a business that they work at until they get a better offer or fail. Or both. Think of Daddy Bush v. Baby Bush: Daddy: Phillips. Yale. Youngest Navy fighter pilot in WWII. Successful business. Daddy did the tax increase even though it cost him politically because it was the right thing for the nation v. Baby: Phillips. Yale. Couldn’t pull off Guard duty even when handed to him on a silver platter. MBA. Failed businesses. Still rich. Baby didn’t care about the nation, just his smirky friends. The rich today just don’t care as much about the nation as their class used to.

c. This revolt of the managers takes power away from long-range shareholders and puts more in the hands of the gamblers. Pretty much everything taught in MBA programs for the last 35 years is wrong or destructive to society or both. Our corporate leadership is more powerful and more parasitic than it has been in many years, and it is more incompetent than it has ever been. All of this shows up in the civic arena because, as Jefferson anticipated, concentrated wealth becomes concentrated political power eventually. This pays for corporatized crap in the public dialogue.

d. If the rich don’t care about the country – and most don’t – as the party of the rich,  the Republican Party sure doesn’t care either. Believe it. Their contribution at the national level to success at civil affairs is pretty much all negative at this point. They have power, albeit reduced, and they are misusing it for no visible reason better than spite and hoped-for political gain. Republicans are dumping enormous amounts of crap into the public dialogue and civil affairs generally.

e. Item d. describes the goodest guys (and gals) in the Republican Party. Out to their right lie the Bush dead-enders, the Tea Baggers, the shrinking 25%, mostly in the South, who never reconciled themselves to civil rights for persons of visible African ancestry, the Union, or democracy and the rule of law. Probably they never will. People on the far right are utterly full of made-up crap and get too loud a megaphone in the public dialogue. And the business Republicans are terrified of them.

f. The Democratic Party has become the Eisenhower Republican Party. Ike described himself as a “progressive conservative.” I think that’s pretty good shorthand for where the center of the Democratic Party has been for the last 35 years. Nothing wrong with Ike – we need a party like that. It just shouldn’t be the Democratic Party, because then there’s no party of Roosevelt to speak up for the common man and woman. Democrats have been dumping tepid crap into the public dialogue and doing tepid things in civil affairs for decades and they still are.

g. Where is some left-wing leadership who can figure out how to get into the dialogue? Steal this Book. The Whole World is Watching. Some bright young minds need to see through the fog to a solution. Note to self: send some money to Pacifica.

h. Educational leadership and the educational ethos have broken down in this country. It’s not just the homogenization of public education at mediocre that came after Brown. Professionalization of education – cadres of degreed, certificated educationalists with huge budgets – hasn’t improved everything about the one-room schoolhouse where Miss Nellie taught everything to everybody after two years at Slippery Rock. Universities see too many things and people as profit centers and funding sources. The students, especially the undergraduates, are getting lost in the publishing, the research applications and grants, the patents, the TA’s, the tuition, the loans, etc.

i. With the professionalization of everything else has come a turning away from the liberal arts. This has been a two-way street: yes, there is less respect and money for literature, history and social sciences, but professors in these fields have also turned their faces away from being useful to society. Too much of what academics do is relentlessly small and relayed in a voice that is intentionally hard for the common man to hear.

j. The assassinations of the ’60’s and the stolen election of 2000 have deprived the nation of generations of experienced liberal-left leadership. This had a direct effect – Al Gore would have contributed a better non-crap to crap ratio to civil affairs; who knows what a Bobby Kennedy administration might have achieved? But it also has had a knock-on effect: there have been a lot fewer people with a chance to work in government or successful citizen movements and develop their leadership skills than there would have been.

k. Respect for, and concern with, the state of civil liberties in this country is abysmal. America, for example, cannot ever say torture is OK, much less institute it as a policy and make hit tv shows about it, and still keep its soul. Casually tasing children and the mentally ill when they don’t comply quickly enough is not OK. Cut and dried.