Letters to the Editor
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Bullshit
McCain will win the presidency and bring George W. Bush's dream of America as a third world banana republic to completion. It cannot be said enough times, Hillary Clinton is a neocon, in league with neocons, for the benifit of neocons. She is a stalking horse for McCain as evidenced by her statements about his experience. This country is over. I will be moving to Canada before Cheney can push the button sending nukes flying to Iran. Mark my words.
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The Tipping Point
That the semi-permanent Republican majority had not an even longer life was the result of the Bush Administration's rank incompetence. Most Americans didn't even notice Bush's radicalism until his programs began going awry. Iraq was an early clue, but what sealed that perception in the public's mind was Hurricane Katrina.
Whereas the federal government, in the form of FEMA, had for years been one of the most reliable -- if not perfectly so -- institutions of previous Executive Branches, its abysmal performance in New Orleans convinced millions of Americans that the White House was clueless and inept -- thus putting into question everything else on its agenda. Iraq was too distant to have the same impact; Katrina hit home hard.
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America's Right Wing Press
In describing the movement of the country toward right wing Republican rule, Blumenthal fails to include the crucial role of the corporate media in shaping American national political discourse in favor of a conservative ideological framework. Before independent media companies were concentrated into divisions of corporations such as General Electric, Walt Disney, Time Warner and Rupert Murdoch's News Company, the press was subject to journalistic standards of documented truths and elemental fairness. However, corporate ownership of news outlets has replaced journalististic criteria with corporate business goals.
During the last eight years, the corporate media has disguised the extent of America's catastrophe in the Middle East, as well as Republican malfeasance in the management of the national economy. At present, the only counterweight to the establishment media is the internet, whose reach is still small in comparison to mass market media. As long as corporate media remains the main source of news, an end to right wing rule in this country will remain an uphill battle.
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Enjoyed your 80proof rant sid...
Oh my are you on another bender Sidney? You must be deep in Ethanol induced denial. Oh well when you (if you) sober up just kindly glance to your Left and see the Insan-o-crats fear & self-loathing on very public display...
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Not in the desert long enough
The idea that this Democratic party is ready for prime time with a set of ideas to lead the Nation founders on the description of the "leadership". Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer? These people haven't had a new idea in years. The party was not out of power long enough for them to retire and take their weak ideas of governance with them. We need a robust set of ideas and a robust set of new people to carry them forward. I will never vote for a baby boomer again if I have a choice of voting for a member of my children's generation.
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The "Sun and Moon" analogy is off-base
The "Sun and Moon" analogy is misguided and shows a lack of understanding as to the nature of what is going on between the two parties today. That mistake will continue to contribute to a deepening chasm between the two parties and our country.
When two average people disagree, we call that a conflict. To them, conflict isn't a way of life, but it's sometimes the only way to reach a mutually beneficial agreement, which is usually somewhere in the middle between the two.
Okay, that analogy holds for NORMAL people. But what if one person has significant advantage over the other, and that same person is continually the aggressor, AND that person seems to get pleasure out of creating conflict AND that person has 99 of 100 marbles and DEMANDS the 1 that is left? Then it's not called conflict anymore, it's called bullying.
Bullying is about one person, obsessed with control, trying to dominate another. To a bully, conflict IS their life, and control is everything - the means AND the end. Bullying rarely has anything to do with the other party - they are simply and unfortunately in the way of what the bully wants, or are a convenient target for their tactics and an outlet for their inner demons.
Bullying needs to be challenged for what it is: anti-social behavior that, at national levels, is ripping away the fabric of our collective character. We do no one any favors if we treat it like an average conflict (splitting that 100th marble in half) because it serves to further victimize the bully's target and legitimize the bully's sociopathic behavior.
Probably the biggest single tactical error the Democrats made was in taking impeachment off the table. This offering of the olive branch was probably intended to show the Dem's "inner" strength and integrity, of their ability to take the high road. And if the NeoCons were "normal", and not pathological bullies, they would have respected that gift. But bullies do not respect anything, they only know fear, and they think the high road is the sucker's path to last place (just ask Kerry and Gore). And how far have the NeoCons have tried to shove that olive branch up our arse since then?
Bullying, if left unchecked, gains momentum over time. You CAN beat a bully, but it doesn't have the same rules as a gentlemen's fight. Until the Dems understand that, we will continue to enable our country's political and cultural devolultion.
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Historical Currents and Electoral Politics
Mr. Blumenthal makes a persuasive case that the Republicans are swimming against the tide of history. But that has been true since at least 1980. I'm afraid the modern masters of electoral manipulation have found ways to divorce electoral results from the dominant social, political, and ideological currents of the day.
The GOP doesn't need to be a majority party. It doesn't even need to be liked by a majority of voters. It just needs to get a majority to vote (or be counted as voting) for its candidate in this or that particular election. It is very good at that.
To put it another way: Maybe you can't fool all of the people all of the time, but to win in American politics you only have to fool enough of them to create (with help from compromised voting systems) the illusion of a majority. And you only have to influence their actual behavior for a few minutes every couple of years. That's how the GOP has been winning since 1980, and it won't necessarily change just because more voters feel generally alienated from Republican policies.
Consideration of this point should remind us that there's something to be said, after all, for the concept of a party -- an organization to which one belongs, and to whose candidates one commits one's vote, because one understands it to generally represent one's own interests, values, or both. Unfortunately that idea is undermined by our non-parliamentary system, and seems now to have been all but obliterated, at least where the Democrats are concerned.
As an English poli-sci professor explained to me some 35 years ago, parliamentary systems work out the requisite political compromises after the election, in negotiations between parties, whereas the American system works them out before the election, in negotiations within parties. The result is a lack of loyalty and ideological coherence, and (as we now see) an unfortunate insulation of the political process from the real values and interests of the voters.