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But surely the biggest lessons of all should have been learned after the Great Depression when Roosevelt's new deal rescued the US from the robber barons and speculators who had run the country into the ground? And yet the candidates don't seem to invoke his memory all that often. Have the American people forgotten? Do they not realise what it took to fix the country last time around. Are the candidates correctly judging the mood of the electorate when they rule out such a Rooseveltian discourse as part of their campaign strategy?
And yet the candidates don't seem to invoke his memory all that often. Have the American people forgotten? Do they not realise what it took to fix the country last time around. Are the candidates correctly judging the mood of the electorate when they rule out such a Rooseveltian discourse as part of their campaign strategy?
American public discourse had shown a great art of ignoring some particular issues and questions. That art surely improved in the last decade, with monopolization of the media and further monetarization of electoral process. Big money is behind this art, you may bet.
Don't Americans realize the situation? Why the candidates keep mum on this? For one thing, most Americans are too busy with keeping their jobs, saving their investments and mortgages. If they have time to realize, they are just happy that they are not so hopeless (yet) as others. In their thinking, all that matters is having some competitive advantage somewhere; so long as they do not feel as belonging to the negative half of a Gaussian bell curve of any sort, they prise themselves as certain achievers. As they notice how hard it is to keep "middle" living standards, they respect those at the top tail a lot assuming proportional "hard work". What teachers, preachers, bosses, TV anchors and electable politicians talked relentlessly all the time for 30 years, that gets imprinted deeply. Taking care of anything but your self-interest has become a tabu. Americans may run from "nanny" government with revulsion, but they embraced a dependence on "invisible hand" (whatever it is) fully.
I would say adopted to "political reality" eagerly and well. McCain is not exactly the same man as in 2000, and the Clintons learned to love power interests willingly. Outright discussion of real economic developments and social consequences was tried so long ago that no one know how that works anymore. The best we can imagine is Obama stealthily planning sane economic policies when in the White House. But he is not the favorite of the deciders anyway, and their confidence that Obama can be beaten is growing. Just wait till he gets the nomination...
It's a Welfare State - If You're Rich
The best we can imagine is Obama stealthily planning sane economic policies when in the White House. But he is not the favorite of the deciders anyway, and It's a Welfare State - If You're Rich
Great comment, great links. Thanks for this. I particularly liked the National Review comments about Obama's speech lacking absolute moral reference points - and the second link which measured everything in terms of what the "markets will like". It seems that money IS the THE absolute reference point for conservative morality.
And the market is their preferred measure of value because there you get one dollar one vote - whereas in politics you only get one person one vote - extremely unfair, if you have lots of dollars.
Once you make money rather than people your God or primary reference point, all of the neo-conservative discourse follows as a natural progression. The task of a truly humanitarian politics is to transform the paradigm into one where politics becomes ascendant over economics, and where Government acts as if people actually mattered.
Those who have sold their souls become neo-cons. But the devil they worship will also destroy them, because once pou've bought, you can also be sold. (With apologies to poemless...) "It's a mystery to me - the game commences, For the usual fee - plus expenses, Confidential information - it's in my diary..."
das monde:
... planning sane economic policies when in the White House. But he is not the favorite of the deciders anyway, and their confidence that Obama can be beaten
and is growing. Just wait till he gets the nomination...
I see that I made a significant omission myself. The last big paragraph should start with
I would say politicians adopted to "political reality" eagerly and well....
Don't Americans realize the situation?
We do, but there is no action because there is still so much to lose. You are not going to take a week off of work to go protest in DC when you'll lose your job in the process and never get another job when you have a conviction on your record.
During the labor movements of the 19th and 20th century, the workers had bargaining power and little to lose. There is no bargaining power today when there is unlimited labor (in terms of the size of the world market it services) available in Asia for 20% of the cost. That cannot be competed with outside of the high end white collar workers that Asia cannot provide enough of along with some high end manufacturing. Many people today do live paycheck to paycheck, but a job loss doesn't mean starvation - that was less certain 100 years ago.
Fox News didn't hide the fact that the recent $30 billion given to JP Morgan was a straight seizure of middle class assets. Some commentators described it as necessary, others, importantly, did not. There is a "reality" threshold at which the American media will report the truth - that threshold was hit after Katrina and we're hitting it again. Still nothing changes, and that's a triumph of early 20th century propaganda that taught us that this is the way things must be, which is now part of our culture. This is the main driver of inaction. It's not coming from the same language still being used today.
DailyKos isn't run by early 20th century propagandists or the corporate media, but the minds of the users were formed by them through the culture the users grew up in. And it shows. "Bootstrap deprogramming" - relearning our interests in this case - will take a generation. That's one reason it's pointless to rail against the American public, and let's be honest about what purpose these diaries serve - we're all getting an ego boost by writing our "told you so" pieces. Europe needs to remember it lives in the same world. Sarkozy's election is the most recent proof.
you are the media you consume.
I hear you when you say that people have too much to lose and still have an often diminishing vested interest in the system. If your pension is dependent on your investments you are much more invested in the success of the system than (say) a French civil servant, who has a state pension as of right, and doesn't have to care whether the economy goes down the tubes or not.... (What do I have to say to get Jerome's dander up these days?)
But if its the economy you're worried about, why support McCain? He has almost no economic or administrative record to speak of, and at least Bill Clinton had some track record on that front. Why trust the neo-cons when they no longer trust each other and refuse to lend to each other?
Believe me, this diary has nothing to do with any egotistical "I told you so" pleasures. I won too many arguments and lost too many wars to fight that sort of caper. What happens in America effects us all, and yes, Sarkozy/Blair show we too can get things wrong. We have our own neo-con tendencies to resist, and it doesn't help one bit if another one wins in the US. The EU simply isn't designed to fill the leadership vacuum that now exists in world affairs.
But we need a completely new kind of leaderhip, and part of that has to be a recognition that the currently dominant neo-con ideology has failed. And yes, we need Americans to live up to at least a small part of their idealistic self image and stop acting like the big bully on the block. "It's a mystery to me - the game commences, For the usual fee - plus expenses, Confidential information - it's in my diary..."
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