- Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works. (Carl Sagan)
- It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare. (Mark Twain)
I wrote an overlong piece yesterday, and was dissatisfied. I kept coming back and fixing it. Finally last night, while in a meditative state fixated on sitcom star Heather Locklear, I realized that anything that hard to write had to be nonsense. I had tried to summarize the rules of politics, but realized that all I was doing was trying to help gamblers understand Las Vegas. It’s a pointless exercise. Gamblers love to gamble, and partisans are the last to understand politics.
It all started at Intelligent Discontent in what ended up being a five-sided debate around two points of view, me against four others. An amazing feature of that debate was this insane fact: When the Republicans funneled $500,000 in money of unknown origin to help Rick Hill in his campaign for governor of Montana, these Democrats were incensed. When the Democrats funneled $1 million of unknown origin to do a powerful campaign close for Jon Tester, these same players were delighted.
It was this brick wall of hypocrisy that launched my long and mercifully discarded piece.
In the two-party system, corruption only exists in the other party. When people like me mention that both look quite the same to outsiders, they rationalize, and call on their intellectuals to make sense of it.
As I watched beautiful Heather last night I realized the real problem I was having with that long piece: I understand politics quite well, usually after-the-fact. It is people who give me trouble. I mentioned to a friend via email recently that firebrands are easy to understand – Randians, libertarians, fascists (going by other names), Tea Party imbeciles and others are wedded to slogans. It’s easy to rally around slogans. It’s “common sense.”
Democrats are far more complex, as they have no base philosophy and no three-word slogan that can summarize their nothingness. So they rally around candidates. So naturally, when the candidates betray an ideal, Democrats continue to support them. Theirs is not an idealistic enterprise. It is a clearinghouse used to gather funds to elect people calling themselves “Democrat.” Nothing more.
I’ve long said that “Democrats are the problem,” and I stand by that four-word slogan. With Obama’s reelection we will have more aggressive wars, torture, indefinite detentions, continued tax cuts for the wealthy, austerity and attacks on our social safety net, targeted assassinations, attacks on civilians and suppression of human freedom all over the globe. This is not the Neocon agenda – this is the enhanced Neocon agenda. When I listed them at ID, the response I got from “Namelessrange” was “blah blah blah.”
This response only makes sense if the man is the issue, and nothing else.
American two-party politics are not about principles, ideals, an informed citizenry or human dignity. It’s all about elections. Obama and Tester got reelected. Nothing else matters.
Democrats are the problem, you see.
Piece of Mindful 
Something that caught my eye: “The pragmatism of doners.” Realpolitik? Or is there something more to know about this sliver of the 1% that gives more than $200 to any candidate of any party? A rarest of breeds.
Getting elected is qualified by practice, repeated over and over again. It tends to wring out any trace of substance. Inquiry is never welcome. And voila’, you have created virtual “progress” out of thin air without moving an inch in any direction.
One might compare it to going to church on Sunday. Just follow the crowd in rhythmic word and song. Isn’t that soothing? Institutions give meaning to those who seek it in groups, while remaining forever blind to the corruption so painfully obvious to those — skeptics not welcome here — who peer in from the outside. In a consumer culture totally dominated by those with lots of money, it makes sense that being a Democrat provides safe harbor to those who think of themselves as intellectually superior, but know they’ll never make the “A-list.” Your freedom, more even than the money they’ll never have, pisses them off 24/7. “Strawman” or scapegoat, they need you because they’ll never, never, ever criticize a pragmatic (rich) doner.
Slogan for the day: Post-modern powerlessness breeds neo-amorality. Psycho-babble, or what? It’s just not that much fun at other blogs. Enjoyed this one very much.
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I dont’ know if they were teasing or even self-aware, but one of them kept reminding me that “he won.” I think one step beyond that is this: The fact that the money went to support Jon Tester, in whom they believe, is all they need to know about it.
The whole thing was really quite revealing once I took time to understand their position on the matter.
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