Why only two parties? There’s a reason, and that reason is systemic, and stems from the workings of financial power. Like Crips and Bloods, there’s only two choices, and each mirrors the other.

One of my favorite books was written in 1965 by Jacques Ellul, and called “Propaganda”. I have never met another person who has read it, or will read it. Perhaps it is the name – “Propaganda” calls up images of Korean indoctrination camps, Soviet commissars and Mao’s Great Leap Forward.

Ellul wrote on a very high level, detached from the power centers, and so described public opinion management not just in the totalitarian centers, but also in the democracies of that time.

This did not sit well with American elites, who would not even acknowledge propaganda’s existence on this side of the pond. It was only something that happened beyond the Iron Curtain. The idea too that it could serve egalitarian purposes must have chafed.

One of Ellul’s observations was that we suffer from illusions, one of which is “progress.” We buy electric razors because they are “better” than the old blades. They are not, but they are newer, and thus represent progress. In fact, he said, progress doesn’t really exist even as technology improves.

Ergo:

Of course, the political parties already have the role of adjusting public opinion to that of the government. Numerous studies have shown that political parties often do not agree with that opinion, that the voters – and even party members – frequently do not know their parties’ doctrines,

and that people belong to parties for reasons other than ideological ones. But the parties channel free-floating opinion into existing formulas, polarizing it on opposites that do not necessarily correspond to the original tenets of such opinion. Because parties are so rigid, because they deal with only part of any question, and because they are purely politically motivated, they distort public opinion and prevent it from forming naturally.

Two parties then existed, and people cling to them because they know no other way. They don’t even represent our opinions.

A party or a bloc of parties as powerful as a would-be runaway party starts big propaganda before it is pushed to the wall. This is the case in the United States, and might be in France if the regrouping of the Right should become stabilized. In that situation one would necessarily have, for financial reasons, a democracy reduced to two parties, it being inconceivable that a larger number of parties would have sufficient means to make such propaganda. This would lead to a bipartite structure, not for reasons of doctrine or tradition, but for technical propaganda reasons. This implies the exclusion of new parties in the future. Not only are secondary parties progressively eliminated, but it becomes impossible to organize new political groups with any chance at all of making them heard. … On the other hand, such a small group would need, from the beginning, a great deal of money, many members, and great power. Under such conditions, a new party could only be born as Athena emerging fully grown from Zeus’ forehead.

Ross Perot is not crazy. That people think he was is the power of propaganda. Since his time, our two parties have fixed the system so that no future Perot will ever upset them as the one of the 1990’s did.

Ralph Nader’s futile attempts in 2000 through 2008 prove Ellul’s point. It will never happen. There isn’t enough money to overcome the big two. So, no surprise, Nader’s latest book is called “Only the Super Rich Can Save Us.” He too has realized the Athena paradox.

What to do? That’s a question often asked. Over at 4&20 over the weekend, they wrestled with immigration … what to do? The author of the post is a Democrat, and had harsh words for Republicans, who are not ‘offering solutions’ to that problem.

We now have 11.5 million illegals here. Most are here due to Bill Clinton’s NAFTA, also supported by the ‘other’ party. They are not going anywhere. We need to melt them in with us, bring them under our laws, and adapt. But bringing them under our laws would not be enough, as our laws are designed to thwart popular organizations. The illegals have to be blended into the current propaganda structure, and so must be shut out until they adapt. So the two parties are merely fighting for the votes of the Hispanic population while not doing anything concrete about the ‘problem.’

There is no solution to be had, or alternately, the ‘solution’ to the ‘problem’ of immigration is, like so much else, an illusory goal. There is no electric razor that will fix that problem.

And so that’s the way it is in the bipartite state. We must seek solutions that cannot be had until we break from the two parties, and the two parties are too powerful to break.

Editorial pages of mainstream newspapers are boring affairs. Is it just me? Most people automatically turn to the letters, as the editorials and op-eds are predictable, pompous, and heavily tilted right.

Most newspapers have glop of local luminaries, usually tilting towards business and academia, that form the “editorial board.” These people write the opinions on the left-hand side of the page.

On the op-ed side, there is a stable of right-wing writers who grace every newspaper in the country. These range from George Will to Pat Buchanan to John Fund and Ann Coulter, and here in Denver, the local right-wing radio jock. These folks are usually unrestrained in their writings, as there is no natural force in our business or political culture acting as a damper on right-wing radicalism.

There is hardly any published voice on the “left” to counteract the extreme right wing extreme views that find their way into mainstream print. Editors feel little restraint on their right side, but on their left it’s a little different. There is a need for perceived “balance,” and so opinion page editors look for “reasonable” voices to represent the “other” point of view.

But it cannot be a lefty point of view. Usually, they settle on Ellen Goodman,

I call it the “Goodman Line” – “this far, and no further”, as Captain Jean-luc Picard said of the Borg. In the mind of a typical opinion page editor, even Ellen is pushing some kind of “left-wing” agenda. They are that extreme, these editors … and yet, when we are mostly right wing extremists, does anyone notice? They are usually self-avowed “centrists.”

It is not a conspiracy, but rather by the power of money. It is no different than metal particles aligning themselves under a magnet. And it is not just the opinion page. All who work for a media small and large, colleges and universities, feel the force of the right-wing magnet.

Typically, an editor will say that there is an impenetrable wall between news and opinion, but as we all know, only lead can stop Superman’s x-ray vision. All editors feel power, no matter how pompously they parade their independence.

Poor old Gary Trudeau (Doonesbury), who tends to be critical of powerful people now and again, is usually relegated to opinion page where he is “balanced” by some lame-brained talking duck. Even the comic page guy knows about the magnet!

Wherever two people have lunch and talk about a third, there’s a conspiracy afoot. That’s been true since caveman days. Conspiracies are all about us, and are interesting and fun to ferret out. But they are not nearly so important as power itself.

We are not relegated to two right-wing parties and hundreds of right wing newspapers because of conspiracy. Our form is a result of our structure. We are allowed to legally bribe politicians, so that it naturally follows that politicians will serve moneyed interests. Since those moneyed interests are usually bent on wealth preservation and expansion, elimination of regulation, minimal taxes and access to the commons, they generally tend to be “right wing.” They are the magnet that controls the particles.

Newspaper owners and editors, radio and TV station managers are intrinsically aware of the magnets of money and power in the community. It all tilts right.

The only answer, if we really cherish freedom, is to take money out of politics and to foster and fund public broadcasting without corporate interference. Until such time, we will be a land of right wingers, half of whom imagine they are not.

In a land of no left there are only right, righter, and rightest.

Glenn Greenwald has written persuasively that the Office of the President is a powerful force in affecting bills that are being debated on Capitol Hill. I have seen the same thing, witness health care: The president was helpless, sat on his hands, as progressive ideas such as Medicare opt-in, Public Option were being discussed. (In fact, he had bargained away a public option before the process even started, but that is off-topic.)

When all that was left was a bad bill, when Public Option was gone, when cost controls were gone, when AHIP and PhRMA had everything they wanted, the president flexed his muscles, threatened, cajoled, bribed …anything and everything to get his bad bill passed.

To those liberals and progressives who are still waiting for his little light to shine from under that bushel basket, please. Accept reality. He’s powerful, he’s interested, but he’s a Blue Dog – a Conservadem. We’ve got ourselves another Clinton.

From Greenwald:

Here’s Politico today on last night’s victory of Blue Dog Democratic incumbent Rep. Jim Matheson in Utah over his liberal primary challenger:

He was the beneficiary of late support from Organizing for America, President Barack Obama’s grassroots organization, which used e-mails, text messages, and campaign mailers to urge Democrats pull the lever for the incumbent.

Similar to what they did for Blanche Lincoln, the Obama White House unleashed its OFA Army to help protect a Blue Dog incumbent against a progressive challenger. Being able to do that, or not do it, or doing it in the other direction (i.e., to support the primary challenger) sounds to me like some pretty substantial leverage to use over members of Congress.

We are seeing it here in Colorado, where Obama is doing everything he can to support the campaign of Conservadem corporatist Michael Bennet over Andrew Romanoff.

And this is not new, nor recent. It started on November 8, 2008, with the appointment of conservative Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff. From there we got appointment of Conservadems to fill vacant senate seats (with the exception of Illinois’ Roland Burris, appointed as a slap in the face of Obama by Rod” Blagojevich. Conservadem Tammy Duckworth was slated to take that seat. Burris has been squeezed out now by this supposedly weak and ineffective president.)

Progressives need not apply for work in this administration. That’s all.