beeblebrox wrote:Obama's presidencey has pacified many of these people, while at the same time steering the country along pretty much the exact same trajectory as the Bush administration. I am embarassed to admit that I voted for Obama in 2008, at the time I didn't care if he was a Muslim, born in Kenya, or the son of Malcom X (that's got to be my favorite one
) so long as he really was going try to change things for the better. Nothing has changed, and that was probably the last time I will participate in any election involving the current system.
I am not embarrassed to have voted for Obama in 2008, although I was so confident that he would proceed along the exact same trajectory as the Bush administration in matters of empire, capitalism and the expansion of panoptic state power that I would have been willing to bet your million dollars against my life to that effect (not having a million dollars, and without worry for my life). It was already obvious what would happen from the choice of Biden and from Obama's stance on the financial crash and support for the retroactive immunity telecom bill, not to mention the carefully parsed rhetoric. Aside from his campaign support for real health care reform, Obama didn't break his carefully-phrased major promises, he only dropped the electric image of change and told his movement to go the fuck home and let Rahm and Timmy and Larry and presumably Zbig and Henry run the show.
I also knew what would happen from having seen it all already with Clinton, with regard to whom everyone seems to have forgotten that he campaigned on two words: Hope and Change. (The total of Obama's innovation was to make that into Change and Hope, plus more Internet and less Fleetwood Mac, more Urban Cool and less Bubba.) Thanks to that, I even realized that there would be a 1994-style election again in 2010, as a result of people seeing how lame the new guy was and so surrendering back to reaction.
Nevertheless, a McCain victory would have represented a popular endorsement of the Bush program, or at least taken as such, and opened the way to a new round of revolutionary changes along the lines of 2001-2005. More importantly, the majority of people would actually believe it to be so, and movements like Occupy would have been not just subject to crackdown but a full round-up. When people believe the majority wants change and are frustrated about it, they get angry. When they believe the majority supports the more open fascism of the Republicans, they get discouraged. (All things being relative.) I also guarantee you there would have been no debate today about bombing Iran, because it would have been bombed starting in 2009. Also, we would not be coopting and undermining the Arab Spring, we'd be putting it under full-frontal assault. We would not be standing apart from all of the countries of Latin America, but investing far more heavily in the attempt to carry out old-style CIA coups against all of the leftist governments. And you would have Genghis Khan and Lord Voldermard as justices, instead of Polly Dee and Polly Dum.
Relatively speaking, I believe the historical record shows the conditions for real movements of resistance in this country improve under Democratic and sour under Republican administrations, although this has nothing to do with what either kind of administration actually wants. It's what the people think that matters, since their attitudes are actually a lot more democratic than the power elites, and if they think a majority supports this shit, they go along. Also, the winning party nationally usually drags in its own in the Congress, the state and local levels, and there is a level of Democratic majorities where changes become possible, since 90 percent of any progressive politicians that do exist are stuck with the Democrats, given that the two-party duopoly is practically pre-determined not just by the money, but by the Constitution with its winner-take-all system.
All that being said, I'm for a constitutional convention to end the power of the dead landowners of 1787 over the living people of today, and from their Constitution to keep only and strengthen the Bill of Rights, and institute a system of parliamentary democracy with proportional representation. Unfortunately, that will also be a disaster - the convention, I mean, since the part where it institutes a better system is not going to happen, either. They'd probably start with working The One God and The Holy Flag into the preamble, since for some reason the slaveholding enlightened intellectuals of 1787 failed on that score, and then replace the Senate with a College of Corporations.
No prevailing social system falls until all of its possibilities have been exhausted, Uncle Karl once said, and so things are very likely to get worse before they get better, and Americans will have to learn their lessons by going through the end of empire, the next few collapses of capitalism, and probably eco-collapse and the full rage of open corporate dictatorship before they choose something new. I don't want that, and I'm not advocating the Leninist line that things will automatically get better only if they get infinitely worse; only that the worst is probably unavoidable no matter what we want. It's the likeliest scenario as seen by the realist in me, whom I often resist.
, they are ALL in in together and anyone who thinks they aren't is bat-blind ignorant.