One person, one vote; no more, no less

The brutal version of Capitalism implemented in the 21st c US has generated terrible outcomes; our economy is at a treacherous nadir and what little we have we've distributed more inequitably than ever. Further, the Right is waging a winning war to further immiserate the middle and working classes in the US. In the post-War, Social Europe has struggled with real and difficult challenges trying to negotiate and sustain the social welfare state and social safety nets as a quid pro quo for the taming of unions and the revolutionary left. With the apparent extinction of the Soviet threat as a revolutionary alternative, the European Right has begun to renege on that quid pro quo just at a time when the world economy has had its powerbase shifted Eastward. But in the US, we have not even tried to strike up such a bargain. Our corporate-government alliance and our far-right-of-center mainstream have acted throughout the Cold War as if Socialism was never really a negotiating threat of the American Left. So working people in this country have had, since at least 1975, neither sufficient union power nor social safety nets to protect them. It is not surprising in that light that the real incomes of most Americans have fallen for 35 years: they have had no power in the bilateral bargain.

Further, in the US, the Right brilliantly formulated an immensely successful rhetorical strategy in the 1990s. (Lakoff, Moral Politics.) In a democratic system you need 50%+1 to support you at the polls. What hope does a party representing the economic interests of 1-5% have? Surprisingly, a lot. By creating false and tenuous connections between the tax and corporate policy needs of the wealthy and powerful and the values of social conservatives, the hidden oligarchs have managed to get working class whites to fight passionately to keep federal income tax rates on the top 1% at near-historic lows. Social conservatives think they are fighting for eliminating abortions, gay marriage, and social safety nets that interfere with what they think of as essential individual accountability but what they are getting is a tax code that makes sure that corporations are first class citizens and they come second. In the end, whether or not what social conservatives want is something you value or find repugnant, they are being cheated by a clever oligarchy that has their vote but not their interests at heart.

The Left faces a different challenge. While the leadership of the Left is not nearly as clear about what it wants as is the Right, they are also disorganized about how to organize and negotiate. President Obama bought into Boehner's used car salesmanship and let Boehner anchor the negotiations on a far-right opening bid. Instead of seeking to re-anchor the negotiations on the far-left and fight his way to the middle, Obama thought he would try to "be reasonable" and "be liked" and so "build a working relationship." When I overpay for a car, the auto salesmen likes me too and he's not unhappy to see me again in a few years, either. The GOP leadership secretly likes -- no loves -- Obama for making their lives so easy. But they know well it doesn't serve them to admit to this; their desire for more is insatiable, so they start anew with demagoguery and hard bargaining, and the leadership of the Left behaves like so many forlorn and naive schoolchildren wondering how the Right can be so mean and unfair.

The intellectual Right would have you think this is a choice between Keynes and Hayek; a choice between liberal fiscal stimulus, big government and the path to serfdom, on the one hand, or a slow and begrudging recession/depression which needs to be suffered until the working classes accept significant declines in their standards of living in exchange for a new capitalist market equilibrium of near-full employment at vastly lowered real wages. American business is competitive again on the backs of the working poor, but that's all the poor deserve for, as Cain says, if you are not rich it is your own damn fault. American capitalism had a place for you at the dais if you only behaved the way you should. The PR men on the Right keep the details quiet; promoting the idea that the market will "solve" these problems in the long run apparently meets their personal standards for ethical communication. It is, after all, true that in the long run, the poor will be beaten down enough to go back to work at vastly reduced wages and so unemployment will indeed decline to its 'natural' levels. But in the long run, as their arch nemesis famously said, we're all dead.

The intellectual Left seems unable to articulate its position. Some, e.g., Krugman, remind us that a 3 trillion dollar recession needed a whole lot more stimulus to have a chance. Even if hundreds of billions sounded like a surreal package, it was too small. Others, like Reich, remind us that the only other time we had this level of inequality in the US was at the onset of the Great Depression. The Communist Left died off when Krushchev aired Stalin's dirty laundry, and the Socialist Left refused to learn the lessons of 1919-1954, and decided to start anew in the 60s calling upon only not much more of the lessons of the left than Brown v Board of Education, Topeka, KS. Years later, having won only some of the much needed civil rights gains to which the Left aspired, they find themselves without the class tools to actually wage the class warfare they badly need and of which, ironically, they are accused.

All this said, I think supporters of Occupy Wall Street should rise above the pettiness of the Fox News's contrasting views of this movement and the Tea Party. Both movements include some good people honestly and legitimately fighting against power. (Both movements include some who are confused, too.)

The Right has always been inspired by a distrust of government power; the Left of corporate power. Where is the place or party for those of us who despise and fear all brands of power?

The problem is concentration of power, whether it be corporate or government. If the corporate media and the framing right oligarchs were not in charge of the our mindsets, Tea Partiers and 99%'ers would see that they are in the same boat, and have much the same enemy: manipulative power interests who remain unaccountable. Both Leftists and Rightists should be taking both the Tea Party and 99%'ers seriously, for at the core they are both right: a democracy cannot function if there is any principle higher than one person, one vote.

The End of Us

At the end of the American Empire, we decided to fiddle while Rome burned; go out with a bang not a whimper. No quiet, decent, honorable exit for us, no. We got good and drunk and forced the bouncer to throw us out on our asses. Will the dollar remain the world reserve currency for even another year? Will Congress ever really function without extremist threats, brutal calls for casting aside our fellow citizens, and wrestling in the mud? I once thought that pure, cold-blooded racism would undermine President Obama's presidency, but now I think it is something else.

Pure, cold-blooded stupidity.

There you have it. I've said it. I'm sorry if you think it elitist, but it's true. We died of a form of rabid stupidity that grew out of a political discourse that was meant to fool the working class white male into thinking he'd be better off supporting the wealthy than affiliating himself with a rainbow of people who ruffled his sensibilities and offended his sense of God and Country. If they weren't freaking out about blacks and gays they were feeling inferior to Ivy Leaguers. And so the ideators on the Right made up ridiculous but powerful labels like "tax and spend liberal" at just a time when their hero, Ronald Reagan, was taxing and spending at a rate vastly in excess of his predecessor, Jimmy Carter. (Reagan cut taxes once and raised them many times, yet he increased spending so much that despite the tax increases he increased the debt four times more than did Carter -- and he did it in two terms. Carter meanwhile alienated progressives by refusing social spending demanded by his base because he was so fiscally tight. But who cares about the truth?)

They paraded out their Stern Parent frame to rile the sensibilities of people who were both righteous enough to resent freeloaders and naive enough to believe that the recipients of social services (who were largely the elderly and the sick and children) were indeed freeloaders. I would find it personally easier to find 535 freeloading legislators than 535 retired elderly who don't deserve their social security checks.

Don't get me wrong. The Left takes some blame here. Not only did the Left fail to see the successful framing game working against them, but they got caught up in their own form of labeling -- political correctness -- and then followed this by cutting off serious disagreement amongst themselves. Leftist errors are personified by NPR's tossing Juan Williams to the wolves and handing him over to Fox News who could play the "fair and balanced" game with their very own black, immigrant liberal on the payroll.

Soon there were just two little red books: the Republican Party Song book and the Democratic Party Song book. No discourse allowed within, no discourse possible across the aisle.

But then it blew up. A third red book came along: the Tea Party Screed. And now guys like Rove see that they are the Dr. Frankenstein and they have created a monster that cannot be contained no matter how firmly they tell the likes of Palin, Bachmann, and Ryan to get back in their tea crates. The Tea Party -- like the Minutemen on the border with Mexico -- started out as healthy protest movement but quickly attracted the very ugly and the very manipulative. The guy who started the Minuteman confessed recently that the violent members who joined were far worse than the immigrants crossing the border he used to fear. Now the many senior Tea Partiers have to face up to the fact that their mob violence has left their own just rewards -- social security and medicare in their old age -- wrecked. They were just played for stooges. The real payola is in the hands of the mega-wealthy and it is moving out of US dollars as we speak.

Fiddle and dance, it's over.