HARD TO SWALLOW
PART ONE: THE KITCHEN
All ideology fails at some logical declension. Conservative ideology fails immediately, on every tenet. All ideologies rightly belong being argued in academia. Conservative ideology belongs deep in a little used musty library kept by an obscure nose-picking curator. I would not want to destroy it altogether, after all, it is just a bad idea. The act of trying to destroy such a wicked thought is antithetical because it thrives on nihilism. Thus is explains the power derived by right-wing commentary from left wing derision.
So, I wonder, are Democratic partisans just morons willing to spring at the offering by Republicans of only a hook and no bait?
Eric Alterman, Matthew Yglesis, Matt Taibbi, Kevin Drum, and many others; not to drop names but to separate names from what is pejoratively referred to as the Main Stream Media (MSM). The debt of gratitude that their readers often express is that they are dependable sources of information, separate from the mundane narratives that hold no value or depth. Some readers have quoted them to set their choice of reading material as being apart from the mundane and shallow narrative.
There are similar journalists and personalities on the Right, they believe also setting the record straight. According to ideological opponents of these commentators and journalists, they are not only incorrect but also engaged in nefarious political chicanery.
What they, the beloved writers on the left and the MSM have in common is to put all of their output into a political context.
Also included with them are the punsters, pollsters, strategist and party operatives on all sides in the political contests that are called elections. I can only venture a guess as to many of the roughly 100 million voters they reach. 1%, I think is a high number, a half million paid party operatives and less than that of paid wordsmiths, broadcast personalities, journalists, correspondents and such like.
As a percentage of the overall population of the United States, they represent about .03%. I welcome anyone to accurately correct my back of the envelope estimations. Do they only reach voters? I think not. Is the reason that there are more than twice as many non-voters than voters always due to the sociological reasons that are often recited or could it be that non-voters realize that the ideological divide is a purposeful deception of both political parties?
I hesitate to call the economics of the political culture a business. It is more a racket because they have captured their patrons in a phony war. If someone views their fellow inhabitant as an enemy, then rhetorical brickbats are justified to protect their interests. Accusing someone for being bat-shit crazy, on political grounds, is not only ill informed but a gross misapprehension of insanity.
Democrats would do well to stop taking the bait, all partisans would do well to stop supporting political parties and candidates unless the flow of time and money is reversed and invested directly by the parties and candidates in question, directly into their communities. At least, after the election, there will be something to show for it, it may even induce some unity among citizens and non-voters will be recognized as voting in their community by helping and receiving.
Are there any among all of you that thinks that a new definition of voting is in order?
PART TWO: PROGRESSIVISM
Historically, progressivism was local, non-partisan and centered on discreet economic issues. The recent primary bid by Bill Halter was none of those. Yes, there was an appeal for grass roots support. If I lived in Kentucky, I would not have seen Bill Halter as the best Democrat for the job. I most assuredly would not have seen him as a progressive candidate and not considered him a progressive Democrat that once elected, would have championed progressive issues.
Yet, a rich union and a national Democratic organizing campaign promoted this very idea. Had the Tea Party activists or any well-funded right wing group done this same thing, progressive Democrats would have cried foul. It was a bid for political power with which to bargain and no guarantee of change. It is not good for one side and not for the other based on the ends justifying the means, i.e. vote for the ‘good guys’. This school prom mentality is wrong-headed politics whoever attempts it.
PART THREE: DEMOCRACY
Once, I was vehement about the restoration of democracy in the United States. Then, I looked back and saw that the presidential election of 2000 was decided by the SCOTUS. Then, there was the invasion of Iraq; one lesson from that was that democracy could not be imposed even by a large powerful democracy.
I learned then that that mature democracies have problems like militarism, empire, neo-colonialism, class inequality, the poor treatment of immigrants and the concentration of wealth and power leading to political conservatism. The things that I saw as wrong occurred in democracies.
I vowed that I was part of the struggle for human rights and social justice and that my democracy had to include that struggle more fully, until then, the United States was never going to be a shining beacon. This country was living a myth.
Politics as practiced today, will never overcome these problems or make worthwhile changes to realize those goals. The business of politics or as I see it, the politics racket, is not a democratic enterprise. Further, elected officials have no room to compromise because governing has been shifted to non-elected power and money establishments, making accommodations for them into government. They either bought their way in or strong-armed their way in.
War is injustice, profiteering and death. Human rights and social justice will never be produced by war, even the so-called metaphorical war that high-minded revolutionaries in this country claim for themselves. As in, “it has been a brutal war on the underserved, but I’m fighting a metaphorical war.” Can you be a more confused Leftist than that?
My quest is a struggle, it involves sacrifice and unlike war, the risks to civilians are voluntary and unlike politics, fully realized in consciousness.