If one follows the political climate as closely as I do, one may find a subtle tactic going on in the Republican legislative leadership.  First, among other examples from the man, there was Eric Cantor’s  recent declaration of Obama’s jobs bill being “dead on arrival”.  Secondly, and well beyond McConnell’s rhetorical manifesto to make Obama a one term president more than a year before the next election, there have been his parliamentary games which descended into the ridiculous last night.

Without boring the less interested in the details, the long story short of it is Conservatives are daring the electorate to show up.  The hubris that drives these maneuvers suggest an entrenchment of certainty — and why not?  After Sen. Kennedy’s passing, a poor campaign by Martha Coakley coupled with a Black electoral turnout that was significantly below that of the historical Black turnout of 2008 was widely seen as the single reason Scott Brown was elected to replace the Senate’s “Liberal Lion”.  Flash-forward to 2010 where 40 MILLION fewer voters — many Black, young, and elderly – stayed at home, again ensuring the falsely perceived “Tea Party Revolution”.  Really, a revolution where 40 million fewer voters voted?  Couple these two events with the results of that 2010 wipeout where a number of statehouses went Republican and whose governors have enacted sweeping voter suppression legislation and one should find reason to worry.

In a previous post I expressed my concern about the practical implications of the “Occupy Movement”.  My respect for their energy and outrage is immense, but being a social scientist my focus resides in finding practical solution models for real problems – and boy do we have real problems.

Occupy Voting Booths offers the most immediate, simple and practical solution to affect real change: LET YOUR VOICES BE HEARD.  Screaming and the beating of drums garners attention, voting elicits CHANGE.

As we have seen with the fear of moderate Republicans in moving “hard right,” the flip-flop efforts of say a Mitt Romney, until one puts the fear of loss into the hearts of politicians you will not change their behavior.  As I have tried to illustrate, staying at home should not be an option and I find it dangerous that some in the Occupy movement seem to think this is a solution.

Solution?  With a few in the Republican field retaining former Bush-era operatives, with Karl Rove’s PAC already on the warpath, if you didn’t like how and where they led this country you had better beware because a Republican president will most likely be enabled by the very possibility of a more emboldened House and perhaps a lost Democratic Party Senate.  Policies?  If you didn’t like Bush-era policies they will be put on steroids in this scenario.

Vote. Write-in a candidate (I might), hold your nose, do what you must but VOTE! . . . and pass the word on Occupy Voting Booths!!

The idealism of Abbie Hoffman et al and their anti-establishment YIPPIE movement (which was far larger than Occupy and more entrenched with a corresponding art, music, film, and literature scene) ultimately failed to coalesce around a unifying platform with consistent themes articulated by competitive candidates who could encourage or force change. The results were, by the 80′s, successful yippies turned to yuppies and Reagan being elected to two terms. What this informs me anyway is that an amorphous movement is doomed to a practical failure when it fails to consider such powerful social history.

I respect the spirit and initial energy of Occupy, but without some set of goals I can’t help but see a future where the 30+ somethings, one-by-one, drift away from the movement, securing their vested personal interests . . . just like the yippies, er yuppies.

When I look at the hyperbolic, inflammatory, and outright incorrect rhetoric (lies) from the fringe right (as represented by Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Palin, Bachmann among many others) over the last couple years, especially since the election of the first minority President (half White, half Black), I can’t help but wonder; did they simply fail middle-school civics courses, did they in fact pass but have forgotten, or do they simply not care as the agenda they promote requires that they make mythical some key concepts, events, and practices in American history, its constitution, and in the evolution of the American body politic.

What I see is the great and powerful Oz telling us not to look at the man behind the curtain.

The Founding of America.

The “Tea Party” loves to cloak itself in revolutionary regalia and nostalgia be they tricorn hats or Gadsden flags, these are images of our America so they say.  But the America mythologized by these merry modern “patriots” belies the facts; that America was founded not for the betterment of all living in the colonies, rather for a select class of aristocrats tired of being subjugated by King George III.  The revolution was indeed fought by aristocrat, indentured servant, and at times slave alike (the half-White, ex-slave Crispus Attucks being the first to die in the name of American freedom), but the beneficiaries of the war were primarily those aristocrats who had “skin in the game”; property and position.  Furthermore, having won their “freedom,” the newly minted  “Americans’” first impulse was not one of universal liberation; to free the slaves, empower women or native peoples, or release the white indentured from their servitude (though some were), no, their first impulse was to reform the monarchy in their image and for their purposes by naming General Washington their king!

While the colonies turned into states, the economic engine that created and expanded a nation was primarily that of White Anglo-centric capital and Black (and sometimes Native) slave labor.  Later, Chinese would be indentured to help build the railroads and by the twentieth century colonial Spaniards (Hispanics) would help to settle the agrarian West only to then move ever eastward by century’s end.  One cannot, nor should not forget the millions of European ethnics (Irish, German, Scandinavian, etc.) that too lent their labor to both the expansion of the agricultural sector as well as the development and solidification of urban life.  Herein, we find the genesis of the “liberal” America we know today.

While many European ethnics were fighting for worker dignity (banning child labor, 40 hour work weeks, overtime, unionization, etc.) others were hoping to draw on the morality of Franklin, Jay, Hamilton and the sadly small handful of “founding fathers” who dared to demand the abolition of slavery.  Other efforts can be seen in the women’s Suffragette movements, farm-worker movements among others.  These efforts would be driven through the 20^th century by “liberals” and their attendant organizations that hoped to distance America from its paternal, class-based, and aristocratic founding, putting the founders’ rhetoric into actual practice.

Capitalism; pseudo-science for the Aristocrat?

From my obscure and humble position I view “Capitalism” as the logical, rationalized “pseudo-science” devised by and for the post-colonial, post-monarchal elite.  This group, after the fall of Feudal monarchies now needed a rationalized (see following on Ayn Rand) systematic approach to justify privilege and the acquisition of land and resources.  Gone were the “spiritual” justifications that “God” ordains kings and subsequently other royalty and lords, no they now needed a structure one that looked and operated the same but that could be cloaked in modern, rational science.  I find it very telling that indeed the structure looks the same with today’s kings being multinational and other corporate executives whom, often operating beyond borders and often in spite of the national sovereignty and/or the will of the local population, install puppet governments to do their bidding and all-the-while expand their reach.  Their vassal lords are politicians and media pundits all well compensated for doing their king’s bidding, primarily keeping the serfs and peasants misinformed but entertained.  Is it simply coincidence that the current, commonly accepted ratio of wealth to population is that 90% of America’s wealth is held by 10% of its people – sound familiar?  One might argue, “but Oprah proves that hard work and time rewards effort!”  Really?  First, one can surmise that for every dollar she has made in her work her distributor has made three shuffling the paperwork which gets to my second point; it wasn’t unheard of for a serf or peasant, in pleasing his king in battle or in loyalty, to be elevated in rank/class.

For all of the bluster “Tea Party” activists try to make about returning to “our” roots and “re-establishing” Capitalism as not only the driver of our economy but of our social life as well they are clearly, once again, derelict and deficient in their understanding of their revered document; nowhere in the Constitution does it mention Capitalism.  Tangential references to commerce, regulation, and freedom have been boiled together with the end result being the assumption that “economic freedom” equals “Capitalism” as opposed to the kind of small, local commerce that was practiced at the time.  Bottom line is that the Constitution does not directly lead to Capitalism — quite the contrary.

One could argue the need for “communal understanding” goes back to the Mayflower Compact where the earliest settlers understood that they would not make it “on their own”.  It is no coincidence that the earliest states chose to affix the term “commonwealth” to their enterprise, again knowing that the community was founded for the common good.  As an aside, isn’t it telling that America’s most rhetorically cherished word, “community,” like so many other valued words in the American mythological lexicon have the root “Com” . . .

Let’s flash-forward to contemporary times as the generational infatuation with Ayn Rand resurfaces.  These nostalgic recollections seem to coincide with periodic and apparent social upheaval in the greater society and her notions of  “objectivism,” “individual rights” and the like give great cover to a sub-culture in fear of change and loss of privilege.  We see her rise to cult-star status in the late 50’s, a time when White teenagers are discovering “race music” and Beatniks Jazz; a nascent Black power movement is seen and “The Feminine Mystique” is being written.  We see her again in the late 60’s when this previous challenge to White, male, patriarchal order is directly challenged – this time by their own children while the country is divided amongst itself as it wrestles with its place in the world.  Her ideas resurrect themselves again in the 70’s/early 80’s; the civil rights and women’s liberation movements fully entrenched and the nation in economic malaise, a President who promises morning in America while circumventing Congress (the law) in dubious, perhaps criminal ways and again pits the “haves” against “the have nots”.  And now we see her again, on the eve that most demographers point to as the socio-cultural, indeed numeric end of a majority White society.  This coupled with the economic dislocation of “free trade” versus “fair trade,” facilitated by conservatives both Republican and Democratic, creates an anxiety that the “White” “aristocrat” finds unsettling and at odds with their assumptions about America and beliefs as to what she should be.

Perhaps Ms. Rand had similar anxieties, ones that propelled her to lash out at not corruption in a Pre-Soviet government but at government itself.  As bourgeois young girl in a well-to-do, professional family the convulsing changes in her mother Russia most have been painful, resulting in great and lasting impact.  Instead of questioning the means and motives of a dictator, she seemingly extrapolated her disgust outward to the entire notion of “state,” seeming never to acknowledge or project that multinational, “corporate enterprise” seeks state-like status of its own – equally heinous, equally damaging to the human spirit.

So now in 2011, three years after America elects its first “minority” President we see her in vogue again.  We see characters in Revolutionary garb citing her words.  We see people who have shown contempt for education trumpeting her philosophy.  We see corporations and aristocrats financing allegedly “grass-roots” organizations made up of people who swear otherwise, even as they continuously contradict themselves and actually operate against their personal financial and class interests.

Characters like “Joe-the-Plumber” have also seemingly been swept by such “Randian” anxiety as well as a current that has been building in America, a notion that any man/woman can rise to the aristocratic class, regardless of connections, skills, pedigree, or education – they do their class a disservice.  It is the “lottery” argument; that you can’t win if you don’t play.”  In this case, the obstacle to wealth is not the lack of purchasing a lottery tickets but the impediment of others, “those” people who are in “their” way; women taking men’s jobs, illegal workers, arguing on behalf of lower tax-rates that are irrelevant to their class, a foreign,  “Socialist” President.  Further proof of this myopia is when they argue against unions that represent workers like themselves and instead protest on behalf of the chamber of commerce (the nation’s largest union); the organization that represents the very corporations and other monied interests that outsource the very jobs they complain about losing.  The end result?  The erosion of the middle-class, and the very country they claim to love.

Why knowledge matters!

As referred to earlier, the “Tea Party” (and others) seemingly has a disdain for learned people, perhaps this is why they find kinship with figures and candidates who display marginal, at best, understanding of the issues of the day as well as American history.  I would conjecture further, that the “powers that be” that finance their movement impress upon them the degree to which education is irrelevant and even detrimental and what is of greater virtue is tenacity and loyalty – again, sound familiar?

This “anti-intellectual” bias has crept into many if not all universities where “liberal” knowledge was once the goal in itself; that a thinking man/woman could find his/her way.  Now, shear intelligence/knowledge (a liberal arts education) is actually almost detrimental to most economic participation for all the aristocrat (corporate overlord) wants is a dutiful “skilled” body finding ways to lower costs thereby enabling his desire at expanded profit margins.  The great American university has been relegated to ivy-covered vocational institutions.

Dystopia or Utopia; toward a more perfect union.

Ayn Rand’s dystopian future of the world and America in specific could be near but not because of the heavy hand of the state as she feared, rather from the blind profit, search and destroy trajectory of our contemporary corporate class, our kings.

In realizing her worst nightmare she never conjectured an America that will become “majority minority” comprised of disparate groups, many of whom have historically required the government to step in and not only secure their liberties, but indeed to redress very real grievances.  Undoubtedly many on the fringe of the right dismiss this as in pursuit of “their” country, their regressive revolutionary belief system(s) dictate that people of color, non-Christians, even White women had/have no place in the “strict reading of the Constitution.”  The fact is, the debate has changed and the country is headed (perhaps by the 2040 census) to a day when non-whites out number whites and many of the demands they place on government will be reflected not only by their historical relationship with government but more so by what the current society affords them by way of opportunity  — or doesn’t.  Will there be a collective “payback” mentality or will today’s minority youth be inclined to want to move the country toward a more perfect union as rhetorically envisioned by its founders?  The consequences could be profound.

Today’s political parties, both Democrats and Republicans, react simply to who votes.  This is also myopic and a dangerous at that.   The Democrats could become a smaller party and the Republican could become extinct.  Perhaps a third party that represents this new majority will form.  Additionally, solely focusing on “those who vote” belies the very real fact that while a given “group” may not voice or flex its desires they will none-the-less impact society in deep ways.  Has, for example, the most recent Paul Ryan budget, one that seeks to further marginalize the minority and poor White among us, calculated for the social and financial costs associated with loss of healthcare, and the general social safety net which invariably will lead to increased poverty, disease, homelessness, crime, etc.?  There is your dystopic future!  No, they don’t think that far ahead at the same time they are seemingly in denial of this profound sociological shift occurring in the country.

There is a way out.  Both parties, primarily the Republicans need accept the transformation under way and concede that a large, multi-cultural country (many of whose citizens will look to the government as the place of socio-economic last resort) will require a “large,” flexible government.  The Republicans will have to, once-and-for-all, reject the Randian, pro-corporation utopia and actually look to the document they allegedly cherish and help to usher in a more perfect union.  The Democrats, if they want to realize their rhetorical role as champions for the middle-class and underdog, need to cede control of the party to the younger, more diverse elements of society.  Both need to, like Rand didn’t, critique not the government itself but elements of the government that fail.  After all, the government is people and if it ceases in its prime directive (“. . . to form a more perfect union, Establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, Provide for the common defense, Promote the general welfare and Secure the blessings of liberty . . .”) one should want to replace the people who have abdicated their charge, anything else is more like choosing to walk, abandoning your car because it has a flat tire.

The United States of Oz is a country built on ignorance, habit, post-colonial, post-feudal mythology.  The United States of America could become the land of liberty and opportunity for all as written and envisioned . . . but not until we expose and relieve the man behind the curtain of his duties and defrock him of his (post) colonial suit.

Just wondering . . .

I get the so-called “taxes” argument but come on, it is rather unsettling seeing them hugging government this much.

But when it comes to the rise of vitriol and now indeed violence in the American body politic . . . their silence is deafening!  They deny cause and effect.

Come on Hannity, Limbaugh, Beck, O’Reilly, Palin, Bachman, Tea Party . . . if Gaga is to blame for your daughter’s bondage attire, then YOU are to blame for stoking the climate of hate permeating this country!

You can’t have it both ways.

The “Tea Party” is, as has been correctly described, a force and as with any force there should be found an equal and opposite energy that at the very least provides balance.  This force seems to have been motivated by their feelings of, again co-opting Barack Obama, their fierce urgency of now as they sense or outright see a country, by way of potential electorate, that is becoming and one that will ultimately ascend to a “majority minority” plurality (and policies desirous thereof) if current demographic forecasts prove to be true.  They are grasping, with a post-apartheid fervor, to secure any last vestige of post-colonial, post-segregation, yes post-“racial” “American” privilege.  This force is sustained by corporate interests who undoubtedly saw a similar wind blowing in South Africa in the early or mid-1970’s as the aristocratic class sought to batten down their proverbial hatches, economically and socially speaking, as the political tide and indeed democratic voices were changing.  This would go a long way to understanding the vitriol and straight-up fear on the far right, but where then is the Democratic Party in this equation?

While there have certainly been eras in the American “left v. right” skirmish that led to outlandish claims and counter-claims –  Roosevelt, Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton certainly saw their fair share of nonsensical rhetoric – many pundits have seemingly observed that there is indeed “something different” in attacks from the far right on Obama and that the Democrat(ic Party) is not simply the upper-crust liberal white male enclave that they once knew and understood as the Republicans were filled with upper-crust conservative white men for in that sense it was more like feuding uncles at a family gathering; it was “all in the family”.  No, the rabid right seems to sense forces at play that the Democratic hierarchy seems oblivious to; namely the ascension of a collective electoral, and certainly socio-cultural, majority that will be uniquely less white, less male, less straight, and very likely less Christian:  the face of new America circa 2040.

Look at the way the President has been shuttled around during the last week to “shore up” the minority and youth vote.  The Democratic Party understands well that its “coalition” is a relative hodgepodge of disparate groups that can never be completely counted on to consistently “show up”.  I assume that they are also well aware that just as Martha Coakley was less a victim of defeat at the hands to the Tea Party as she more lost to the apathy of the Black vote in the Massachusetts Senatorial race of last year, they also seem to fear that Tuesday could yield few defeats while succumbing to many losses.  Why is this?

I posit that it is, in great part, due to Democratic and liberal institutions not giving due and proper respect to the previously noted change in demographics.

Candidate Obama was widely embraced by the liberal left as the “Black” candidate, apparently in deference to the Kenyan father he admittedly hardly knew as opposed to the “American” candidate, one born uniquely as a result of the American experience and yes, sired by aforementioned father but raised in an all too familiar American milieu: by a lower-class, white mother.  How difficult would this story have been to demonize by the lunatic right?  I have addressed issues regarding Obama’s biracial make-up in previous posts so I will limit myself here to just say this is but one example of demographic blunders on the left.  The cable media outlet that favorably lends itself to issues left-of-center, MSNBC, also has a demographic identity “crisis”.

While I fully understand staffing issues at media outlets being as much about ratings and subsequent advertising revenue as anything else, I am hard pressed to accept the notion that in its entire Monday though Friday lineup, from sun up to late night, there is no room for say a Michele Norris or Cynthia Tucker, or another with their proven track record, to host (as a program lead) a provocative, critical, and in-depth, politically tinged show.  Why is it that these two women, as well as men like Pulitzer Prize winning Eugene Robinson and John Ridley who had previously co-hosted on MSNBC, are qualified to frequently be “guests” on say The Chris Matthews Show but then are never promoted or otherwise groomed into a show of their own like say Dylan Ratigan or Rachel Maddow who, as an openly gay woman, brings a fresh, diverse perspective and voice that I argue needs to be reflected by one or more proactive hosts, not reactive guests, of color.

Herein, within institutions on the left, I can’t help but wonder if direction and leadership, as opposed to simple representation, are also lingering vestiges of ego and type of privilege.  In other words, for “minorities,” it’s great to be part of “the big tent” but problematic to always be sitting in the stands, never to be the ringleader especially when we see that ticket sales to the show are lagging.

Obviously I cannot say that a “respectful” level of  “minority” leadership at the DNC would consistently bolster minority turnout any more than I could predict that a substantive minority presence on MSNBC would increase ratings.  There are variables in all equations but where I can opine based on empirical considerations is that on the left, many major institutions don’t look like the country in which America is becoming.  We know why this is the case on the right and these reasons will be the source of their ultimate marginalization as a national force, I’m trying to figure out why it seems this way on the left.  Who knows, Democrats may eek out victory from the jaws of defeat, minorities may show up – I certainly hope so – but even if the tent doesn’t collapse on the left during this election cycle, in the future the tent will have to be reinforced with support pillars made up of different composite materials.

I am biracial and an “independent liberal” who finds very few speaking to me (a member of the future social majority) in my language and to either my macro or micro aspirations.  I could be wrong in my thesis, but I would like someone to explain to me then, and to those with whom I converse, how.

General overview of the “White Horse Prophecy”:
http://www.utlm.org/onlineresources/whitehorseprophecy.htm

From the Salt Lake Tribune:
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/blogs/crawler/49967642-70/beck-church-mormon-carter.html.csp

It’s feudalism at its most modern as the serfs (Tea Baggers and the like) parrot their millionaire Lords (Palin, Beck, Hannity, O’Reilly, Breitbart, Kristol, Coulter, Ingraham, Fox News, the Heritage Foundation, etc.) as they all bow and do the king’s bidding.

Pathetic!