Post things like this (originally written as a comment at balloon juice but i decided to put it up here as well):
after two years of an Obama presidency, it is past time to continue to blame the media, blame the Rs, blame everyone except the person (and his party) who, sophistry aside, began with a tremendous amount of power. the Ds, their leadership and their national chief have muffed, blown, or frittered away every advantage they gained in 2008, so much so that a bunch of buffoons had no difficulty making a campaign based on blaming the Ds for the continued destruction of post—WWII america.
it was easy for the Rs to do so, because while they lied about the why, the evidence of where true power lies was there for all to see. bankers and insurance companies made out like bandits while Obama declared himself lord high executioner and appointed “deficit commissioners” who told the working class to drop dead. the Ds found themselves unable to counter the inanity because they could not; after all, they had continued the wealth transfer the Rs started. all the Ds had was rhetoric that bore an increasingly tenuous relationship with reality, though it continued on its lofty, lonely rhetorical heights. at least the Rs could pretend they believed in a crackpot theory while the Ds were, indeed, socialists who lacked even a fig leaf of rhetoric to cover their servitude. but then, a socialistic oligarchy is not the stuff of great populist phrasemaking.
to put it a bit more precisely, on every single major issue, this administration has sided with the wealthy and the profiteers and poltroons of perpetual war and the attendant destruction of civil liberties. after this amount of time, one can continue to concoct rationalizations, or one can start to, perhaps, infer that something is amiss with this picture, namely, that the Ds don’t side with their voters, because that’s not who they represent.
it is undoubtedly difficult to come to terms with the idea that the political party you have worked in, for, and perhaps most of all, have believed in, sees you as a commodity rather than its principal. but then, why should they see you as anything other than cattle? their true principals don’t sit in smoke filled rooms, or man picket lines or call centers. they don’t even run unions, though Ds might in a few places still care about those relics. no, these commanders of the spigots of jobs and cash run board meetings and can be found at places like Aspen that are properly fenced off from the increasingly impoverished voters.
now, someone will say that this overstates the case and that of course the Ds care about their “voters”. and yes, they do. like the Rs did during Junior’s tenure, they can throw the “base” a few trinkets along the social lines so as to have something to point to. and it’s not as if their masters mind these gestures: after all, the end of DADT means more cannon fodder and coffins to sell, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to write the health insurance regulations in DC where you don’t have to deal with those pesky state regulators. just don’t even think of changing the tax rates. come to think of it, don’t even talk about it.
even assuming one considers all of the above, it’s still difficult to think about. on top of that, there’s any number of clever people, some paid, some not . . . who continue to argue that you should just ignore what has actually happened in favor of what might have happened otherwise, or how much legislation has been enacted. until this administration, i had never been alerted to the notion that quantity of legislation was more important than its substance. anyway who cares what they say because they are just negative haters. the Ds can only be failed by disloyal Ds not by their party, just as america is still a great, special nation that’s just having some problems at the moment.
perhaps here lies part of the problem. leaving the R mouthpieces, jingoes and out and out fascists aside, it’s interesting to note how the vast majority of americans are wholly unable to come to terms with the notion that perhaps the country they inhabit is, well, pretty much like every other empire has been. in a word, icky. that’s if you are a citizen of said empire. if you are not, well, you take your chances; after all, the perception of safety amongst the citizenry of the empire is much more important than your life.
it may also be true that those of us who have come to the view that the US has become something much closer to a merchant of death have been too strident about making such arguments. after all, to some extent we are talking about feelings and beliefs and ideology, despite the many clever references to policy and pragmatism. or perhaps it is just a failure of imagination on my part; i just don’t get how it’s pragmatic to kill people in other countries for domestic political reasons. perhaps those are the same folks who say it’s pragmatic to write toothless bills and champion them as “reforms”. and since nothing else could be done, this was necessarily the best of all possible outcomes. because, you see, nothing else could be done. yes.
