So the "conservatives" on Wall Street and in parts of corporate America seem on their way to buying an election. This is not foreordained: Voters could come to their senses and not return to power the very party whose policies and ideology most caused our mess. Democrats might come out fighting as Democrats, not Republican-lite — although that window is closing thanks to the odious and dangerous vote-by-mail trend. But it looks as if this is the world we'll live in. And we'll look back fondly on the hapless Harry Reid and the rictus smile of Nancy Pelosi.
The ideal world of the Republican plutocracy and their Tea Party stooges is the 1920s, if not the Gilded Age. No New Deal. No Social Security or Medicare. No worker protections purchased with union blood. It's a far cry from the "right to rise" for everyone and heavy emphasis on government infrastructure that characterized the early GOP, from Abraham Lincoln's pronouncement: "Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." It is far from Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford or even Ronald Reagan." They want government to enhance the fortunes of the rich, the big corporations, a huge defense establishment and devil take the hindmost — for the middle class, it will be the law of the jungle. At least the years of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover didn't include theocracy, the sidelining of science and endless wars.
Whether they get it will be another matter. But if the election turns out as it appears, I wonder whether the Democratic Party has much future, whether it will become the Whigs of the 21st century, or the equivalent of Britain's Liberal Party. And, forgive me, I wonder, in the wake of the Citizens United decision by the permanently "conservative" Supreme Court combined with an ignorant citizenry and the bungling of the Obama administration, whether progressivism can ever make a comeback in America. Karl Rove and the old white people win, after all. And who knows if the coming racially diverse and smart young America promised by Mr. Obama's election will ever materialize as a positive electoral force in the face of so much corporate and plutocratic power?
This is a major turning point, dear readers.
We need to separate. I've written on this before, so this is not sour grapes about an election. Novelist Douglas Coupland has written about the "hate states" forming a coalition. But despite the secession talk after President Obama's election, the right really wants the whole country. Their talk of local control is a sham — how's that worked out in Arizona? Yet looking at the polls, outside of the reddest states the nation is still closely divided; the left, such as it is, just can't win. So an orderly and peaceful division, along with migration, is worth considering. As the costs of empire, the continued decline of the middle class and crashes of crony capitalism increase, it may be inevitable.
After 2012, the Republican Congress and President Huckabee or President Romney (if the evangelicals can stomach a Mormon), will face the same reality-based world that did in George W. Bush. Only more so. A second lost decade, huge imbalances of debt and trade, stagnant middle-class wealth with no housing bubble to conceal it, the rising costs of climate change, world peak oil, China. These things are happening whether Americans want them to or not, whether the faithful believe in them or not. Yet the right will, apparently, continue to bamboozle the electorate. Their wealthy patrons will continue to buy elections and buy off the people with electronic toys and campaigns of hate against shadowy "socialist" conspiracies. Such are the wages of a nation when citizens become "consumers," when education is scorned, when people don't read, and the likes of Christine O'Donnell, fetching as she is, and Jan Brewer are leadership material, because "they're like us." Thank God that Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR and even Reagan were not like the lowest common denominator. Even Jefferson Davis was a better leader those (e.g. Robert Toombs) who lusted after the presidency of the Confederacy.
Ideas have consequences, as the "conservatives" like to say. So do elections. The right has shown time and again that they are incapable of governing a diverse and complex society. This deficiency is in the bone and muscle of their ideology. Yet they can always blame others. Their hostility to science, infrastructure, education, geopolitical reality, the foundations of a thriving middle class and economics is astounding, yet they get away with it. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality, a Bush administration official told the author Ron Suskind. Yet it's an empire based on unsustainability. So the Republican comeback kids may preside over the decline of the United States. But they also play with fire: With their hate, selection of internal enemies, thuggery, redistribution of income upwards, military adventures — all working against a real reality, violently destabilizing, that won't be held at bay for long.
God knows where it will leave us, but it won't be into broad, sunlit uplands.
You look at the trendlines because history is really so much inertia interrupted by occasional cataclysms. This is why Arizona is essentially doomed. It's why America is now looking that way. We can't simply keep deferring crucial action until some imaginary progressive victory years down the road. The recovery periods will get so long, expensive, and painful that we might as well let the nihilists take full responsibility here. Of course, they won't because extremists never do. Their scapegoats (Muslims, Mexicans, gays, blacks, and even liberals) will bear that burden with their lives.
Posted by: soleri | October 28, 2010 at 04:14 PM
The "separate" state you reference was envisioned in 1975 by Ernest Callenbach in his book Ecotopia. I pulled it off the shelf and here is the first sentence on the back cover: "Ecotopia was founded when northern California, Oregon and Washington seceded from the Union to create a 'stable-state' ecosystem: the perfect balance between human beings and the environment."
The story begins with the first official visit in 20 years by an American, a reporter Will Weston.
"Like a modern Gulliver, the skeptical Weston is by turns impressed, horrified, and overwhelmed by Ecotopia's strange practices: employee ownership of farms and businesses, the twenty-hour work week, the fanatical elimination of pollution, 'mini' cities that defeat overcrowding, devotion to trees bordering on worship, a woman-dominated government, and bloody, ritual war games."
Jon, perhaps this work was what planted the seed for your concept, being that you now live in the Pacific Northwest. I've carried it with me for 30 some years. Time to read it again I think.
Jean Emery
Phoenix
Posted by: Jean Emery | October 29, 2010 at 08:31 AM
I feel that I may have some insight to this strange Tea Party and extremist right-wing debacle: This is a personal experience I debated posting but think it is very relevant to the topic.
I have a few friends, three as a matter of fact, who are in my opinion Tea Party extremists. Needless to say I have not spoken to them in some time and not because I don't want to or am not man enough to set aside our differences, but because I find their self-deprecation to be so extreme that all their personal relationships have suffered.
Case in point; my ex is so against gay "rights" including marriage that he becomes very irritated when I explain a growing desire to want to settle down with a nice gentleman. He finds it a violation of his religious upbringing as a Catholic (note: I am Catholic myself).
He even wishes to be straight and have a "normal" heterosexual relationship with a woman, the dog, some kids and the whole nine...months (ugh)! He also hates social welfare programs despite the fact that he is on disability for a condition he could have wholly prevented.
I find his stances very hypocritical and I see a parallel with other Tea Baggers...er Party(ers). They wish so much to be making $250,000 a year that they will vote against their own interests and well being. They are willing to take the side of those that would not be their friends to make themselves feel better by living a fantasy of grandeur that doesn't exist for them and their middle class, or lower middle class situation.
In turn these old friends call me a hypocrite because I was a benefactor from a government "welfare" program that should be scaled back (in their opinion). You see I earned my bachelor's with the "socialist" G.I. Bill and that is how I was able to get a good job. I feel I earned that money for school and they tell me I should not have gotten paid after being paid for a job I no longer was doing.
I don't get the Tea Party and how people I liked, and one I loved (and still do) could have become "stooges" as Jon so rightly calls them. The only explanation I can suspect is self-hate.
Posted by: phxSUNSfan | October 29, 2010 at 10:10 AM
soleri
"enertia interrupted by occasional cataclysms"
"deferring crucial action"
In a very few words, you just summed up our country's political "Business Plan" of the last 60 years.
I've always been one to face a problem head-on ASAP. To live in a country where politicians push the problems "down the road" for future consideration has always driven me crazy. They delay until the problem is unsolvable. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad world.
Posted by: azrebel | October 29, 2010 at 11:31 AM
Recently saw a production of "Winnie the Pooh" done by an excellent childrens' theater. I was taken by Eyor the donkey, who lamented the condition of most everything. Among our choices are the "hang in and fight" vs. the Eyor option. I choose the former because there's at least a grain of optimism that the far right will succumb to the "hoist by their own petard" syndrome that seems to be catching up with Mr. Arpaio and Mr. Pearce. So, am I related to Alice in Wonderland?
Posted by: Jim Hamblin | October 29, 2010 at 03:04 PM
Jim, if you're related to Alice then so am I, bro!
Posted by: phxSUNSfan | October 29, 2010 at 06:09 PM
The republican party will never gain substantial power. Since 1930, the Republicans have held power in both chambers of congress for only 12 combined years, I believe out of 80. The other 68 years have been either split control, or democratic control of both chambers.
Posted by: Pete | October 29, 2010 at 10:08 PM
There is one certain outcome, the Republicrat/Demoblican party will win the election and continue to manufacture consent.
Posted by: Noam | October 30, 2010 at 05:51 AM