Eli!

Buzz!

We’re turning into the Roman Republic, where citizens voted in descending order of wealth and the Censor passed judgment as to which men had enough money to enter the Senate.

At least the Romans were honest enough not to put “Equal Justice Under Law” on the front of the building of the nation’s highest court.

“The love of money is the root of all evil.”

“Love thy God with thy whole heart, thy whole soul and thy whole mind, and the second is like unto it, Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

The first quote cancels out the second, the second quote cancels out the first. Simple. Which do the Republicans, and other wealthy 1 percenters, love more, God or money? Their neighbor or money? The souls of the Republicans, and other wealthy 1 percenters, hang in the balance. Will their love of money crush any semblance they might have of love for God or their neighbor? Will evil (their love of money above all else and the “power” their money buys) drive their every waking moment, leaving no room for caring about God or their neighbors? It looks to me like they’ve already chosen their path, the first quote over the second. Citizens United was a “love of money” (and the “power” it buys) Supreme Court ruling by the Republican-appointed justices who sold out our beloved democracy for “thirty pieces of silver.” Poor, poor Republicans…not a clue.

If the Democrats could work together and sign onto a popular party platform the evidence is that they could win easily.

Modern U.S. Platforms
http://i-voter.tripod.com/Platforms.html

However; since, IMO most democratic politicians are individually hired employees – it probably will not happen.

Aloha, Eli…! *heh* Once again you’re preaching to the choir…! ;-)

The right-wingers really are destroying this country. The worse it gets, the more the fools that vote for them complain that the left is destroying the country.

Aloha, CTut…! The choir are the only ones who listen…

We could have an equal amount of money and still lose because Obama and team have a shitty, uncrafted message. They are running an undisciplined, unimaginative campaign. His little mistakes like the private sector is fine are ones we can’t afford. Because the other side knows how to message better.

Obama’s new metaphor? (A bunch of guys go to dinner, run up a big tab, and leave you with the bill!” ) It’s a figleaf and it’s supposed to hide the fact that he hasn’t done enough on jobs to satisfy the American people? That’s ridiculous. It works only with his solid supporters, not going to swing a swing voter. NYT said it’s just a riff off 2010′s equally ineffective metaphor: They took the keys got in the car and drove it into the ditch. Now they want the keys back?”

Shit — Pumping billions into TV ads that peddle that junk-thought isn’t going to turn any swing voters. Meanwhile Professor Know It All completely ignores people within his party who have been Messaging Champions, such as Robert Reich — with his latest MoveOn “instructional video” that is dynamic, informative, and NO BULLSHIT > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozMpjCSUuWk

It’s a red herring to presume Obama’s got pressure from a lopsided playing field when he: doesn’t have the strength to go to Wisconsin and take a stand; doesn’t go to Netroots Nation (again demonstrating loud and clear he doesn’t give a shit about progressives, but only wants your vote); and he doesn’t address economic issues forcefully, with less bullshit slogans and more straight talk a la Robert Reich. that’s what I think.

It really all goes back to there being too many stupid people in this country.

When your entire agenda is to use government to serve the selfish interests of the greediest, most unethical and unpatriotic subset of the wealthy at the EXPENSE of everyone else, then you have to rely on relentless, dishonest propaganda (Fox News, talk radio) to capture the most gullible voters, and voter disenfranchisement to minimize the rest.

We could have an equal amount of money and still lose because Obama and team have a shitty, uncrafted message.

No, you would lose because Obama is on their side. Ignore what Obama says and pay attention to what he does.

Great summary, IMHO.

Beautiful:

Just as facts have a well-known liberal bias, money has a well-known conservative one, and it’s a much more powerful motivating force than facts.

Truth in a nutshell.

Thanks.

The problem isn’t that the Democrats don’t have enough money, the problem is that the Democrats are all too willing to act like Republicans to get what money they do have.

The reason that their messaging and strategy sucks is because of the contortions they have to go through to try to gloss over that fact. Better to have the base think they’re well-meaning, ineffectual progressives than cynical, calculating conservatives.

Thanks! Alas, money trumps facts every time.

Also:

Money is what pulls Republicans towards their traditional core values, and Democrats away from theirs.

Great.

What is the point of this election? The president has already promised to hold onto the center. He says he wants to put us on a path to take down our debt. He assumes after the election he will have a mandate to go for a grand bargain to cut expenses. He also figures that will be the time for bi partisanship since there will be no reason to continue. Really?

He is taking us nowhere. Tell me seriously, what is the difference with Romney? We are now going on four years of twenty plus million unemployed. And he is talking about a grand bargain? I must be a fool. This man does not understand politics any better than he does economics. On that score, he is a idiot.

I think the calculus is pretty simple:

–all those who voted against him last time will do the same this time.
–millions of those who voted for him last time won’t do so this time.

Money ain’t going to change that.

I figure it’s O. The Grand Bargain is coming. More austerity in the face of a depression. [Why?] Aerial drone blitzes. Covert, undeclared war, where leaks are fine (if positive for the political Administration) but whistleblowers are fed into the gaping maw of the national security state.

Looks pretty raw-dog to me.

Will their love of money crush any semblance they might have of love for God or their neighbor?

How Your View of God Shapes Your View of the Economy:

In fact, for many white evangelicals, religious and economic spheres are conceptualized as two sides of the same coin. They describe their worldview as one in which the spiritual and the material are mutually dependent and interactive. And the popularity of this worldview cuts across social class.

What Eli wrote is very true!

It’s also something that has been analyzed to death now for many years.

The question is: What, if anything, can be done about it? And by whom? There is no way to use the voting process to end the problem of financial corruption of the political system, because the only candidates you and I have to vote for are candidates that have been selected for us by the very rich, and who would never actually do anything to end the corruption. The national political class at this point is a *product of* the corruption.

So what is to be done here? What can be done?

Yes. Capitalism and Rapture conjugated and consummated.

But the fucking liberals don’t have the tools to keep the monsters at bay.

You can only beat a dead horse for so long before it remains dead. You have to figure out what to do about the body next and how to get a new horse.

Money is hard to beat, maybe impossible.

Yeah, money changes everything. Obama told us he was Spartacus.

Liberals have no political power anymore. Bill Clinton and Obama show how far to the right the Democratic party has shifted since right-to-work laws greatly decreased both union membership and the power of labor. (Obama is to the right of Clinton who was a corporatist Democrat.) Meanwhile, Republicans have become much more militant because there is no effective check on their excesses and they have more tools (Fox News, talk radio) to propagate their lies. The mainstream media don’t dare challenge their bullshit.

Here is a clever comment I saw elsewhere. There are two types of Republicans: the rich and the stupid. The rich want to keep the stupid stupid, and the stupid want to keep the rich rich.

Excellent point. If you had serious money to bribe politicians, you would be a fool to invest in “an undisciplined, unimaginative campaign” when you could put your money behind rabid terriers like Walker. If all you are looking for is a return on your investment, who are you going to back?

Great post and summation, Eli.

It’s not been remarked upon too much, that I’ve seen, but I think there’s been a collective ‘Oh, what the fuck, who cares?’ moment in America. Not to be flippant, but I suspect a lot of people just don’t buy into our electoral politics anymore. Not all, but a lot more than before.

(Overly cynical? I doubt it. Ask a kid.)

“We tried the Republicans and they sucked, so we tried the Democrats, and they sucked too. Then we tried the Republicans again, and they sucked even harder. So what now?”

Propaganda has very little to do with intelligence. It is about pushing visceral, emotional buttons, about putting Right Answers where thinking should go. The educated are as susceptible to it as the ignorant. The middle class as vulnerable (actually perhaps more so) as the lower class. The difference between Fox or CNN or NPR is the packaging not the message.

I suspect #OWS has been a non-violent Greek Chorus for us all. The rest that follows, I can’t predict.

Katzenburg isn’t giving his money no-strings-attached. Hollywood has been pushing for extreme measures to “protect their intellectual property”, even if it means turning the American Internet into the Chinese Internet. That’s why you keep seeing draconian censorship bills introduced, and why there are trade agreements negotiated in secret that seek to eliminate the first-sale doctrine and fair use.

So if money buys the election, how can that be changed?

“What is the point of this election?”

Perfectly put. We so often assume these “leaders” in DC have our interests in mind, that they are looking out for us, that they are minding the store on our behalf.

Obama may not understand many things, but he does understand on which side his bread is buttered. And when it comes to unemployment or any other collective, quality of life issue neither Obama nor the people he works for give a fuck about the folks on the short end of the stick. They quite simply don’t give a fuck.

No, I think you’re right. Chomsky remarked after the 2000 election that the results were the same as you would expect if people were choosing between 2 Martians. I think it’s back to that – the candidate of Change made a fairly obvious decision of rescuing Wall Street at any price while ordinarily people twisted in the wind, and it’s back to not giving a fuck.

The worst part is that now there’s a generation of young people who are going to be, quite understandably, justifiably pissed off at being bullshitted and completely turned off the political process for quite some time. Unemployment for those people is the highest of anyone.

Man, I wish I knew. It’s possible to come up with laws that would fix it, but awfully hard to see any way to get corrupt pols to vote for them. There are people who are much better at the direct-action, bypass-electoral-politics stuff than I am, but I think we would need some pretty huge critical mass before it had significant impact. And even then there’s a good chance we’d get some kind of half-assed fake reform designed to placate us.

The way forward seems blocked. I suppose the House still gives us a chance. But money can change all that too. We need something truly grass roots but where do we find the candidates for that?

It does get depressing.

Why wouldn’t money be able to change that? If money couldn’t accomplish that end, how do we explain the growing sums of money spent on elections (2008 saw an increase of around 25% over 2004)? If the television tells the vast majority of US citizens who to vote for and money is the primary factor for TV access and effective messaging, why wouldn’t available funds throw trump?

Or, since when does a liberally, objectively informed citizenry determine through voting who the president is?

Further to my #32, I’d honestly add, the times call for revolution. (And yet, and yet, I am not advocating violence, not at all, though the American Republic was born of violence.) I will add this: I don’t think revolution/insurrection is remotely possible anymore as a vehicle of political change. The state is too strong. Different approaches from within might be more effective.

(Joke: Establishing democracy in a non-Tom Cruise movie.)

“Don’t grumble, give a whistle.” :)

Eh, put your emotions and efforts elsewhere. Voting for “leaders” is such a small part of democracy and citizenship.

“They describe their worldview as one in which the spiritual and the material are mutually dependent and interactive.”

Ha! Fundamentalists are known above all for their lack of cognitive dissonance. If as many as 10% of Christians actually followed their leader on the issue of god and mammon, this “Christian Nation” wouldn’t be having the economic issue it is. On the other hand, if all these Christians read are those bits of the Old Testament where God commands the Israelites to murder and rob from everyone who isn’t a member of the Chosen People, well than Christianity and Republican economic policies make perfect sense together.

Unfortunately, that’s largely because there aren’t any…

That’s the real situation, isn’t it.

“what is the difference with Romney?”

The Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Defense of Marriage Act…..do I need to go on?

As America plunges towards third world status the people are not taking it well, and are beginning to reach for a strongman fuhrer in an effort to restore the country to its former greatness. A weak economy, with the resulting social unrest, combined with a weakening industrial base and an enormously powerful military to not bode well for civilization.

Since most folks are unable to withhold income taxes anymore (a la Thoreau), we could 1) Stop giving these rich fucks our discretionary income via over-consumption of consumer goods, stop borrowing from them, stop giving them our nest eggs/retirement money to gamble with. 2) Stop joining the military (and, shit, the police force while we are at it). 3) Stop watching the TV so the owning class can’t tell us what to think and how to act. 3) Stop considering them as our leaders. 4) Stop obeying their rules. 5) Set some shit on fire (nothing gets the attention of the owners like the destruction of private property–god, they hate that). Well, some non-violent suggestions anyway.

Aren’t any what, leaders?

To my mind, reliance on leaders, especially the unmitigated deference to them, is antithetical to democracy, which insists on the equal political value, investment and competence of each member of the citizenry. I have a hard time understanding so many people who at once pretend to champion democracy and then immediately call for political bosses to lead us all down the path of righteousness (I know, the US is a representative democracy, but that doesn’t explain the political surrender, deference and even worship of leaders.). Or others who praise democracy and then dismiss the bulk of the citizenry as stupid sheep. Who are these posers? Perhaps the US does not have a democratic system with accountable representatives not because the system is owned by those with money but because the majority of the people don’t believe in democracy and their inherent value and responsibility as citizens. On the other hand, it is so much easier to just turn everything over to an authority figure.

That does seem to be a real possibility for the near future–and it’s not just an emotionally satisfying idea for the far right, either. It also seems to frequently be the pattern for empires once they have started to decline after switching to a finance-based economy.

What will happen with the US military is the wild card for me. I have a hard time believing that the US military will go the way of the Soviets in just walking away and abandoning equipment in satellite countries. I suspect, fueled by generations of exceptionalism, that the US will burn out, not fade away.

Civil disobedience. Or by collectively valuing something more than money. Like The Oracle started out this thread saying, who are we all going to love, money or our neighbors? How this cultural shift takes place, i don’t know. Usually, a current system has to crash and burn, or otherwise be discredited (especially the leaders of the system), in order for such shifts in consciousness to take place.

Greed = conservatives aspiring to keep more of their own money.

Altruism = progressives aspiring to get their hands on the money of others.

So tell me again who’s more focused on money?