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Question; Is the sudden ramping-up of Bloomberg an Establishment conspiracy?
Every year thousands of Americans are indicted by prosecutors in the US for conspiracy: to murder, to rob, to steal, to sell drugs. Every year the US, thousands of people are convicted of such conspiracies and such conspirators overflow our prisons. The grand-daddy of all conspiracy statutes is RICO and it has become a prime tool of both state and federal prosecutors. And on a more mundane mount, every year millions of Americans conspire to throw surprise birthday parties.
And yet, anyone who suggests that two or more people are engaged in a political conspiracy to achieve hidden (and maybe not so hidden) objectives is a conspiracy nut.
Yes, Virginia there are conspiracies and there is an American Establishment that seeks to keep debate and policy within "safe" limits. Bush II was on the fringe of that Establishment and then went completely outré when he ditched Bush I's safe Establishment advisors for the quick fix of the social - and economic - reactionaries.
Hillary was probably once a safe candidate but internal Democratic politics are driving her. along with the Dem Party into a populist mode that threatens to attract the free-falling middle-class and even a portion of Evangelicals who take the social Gospel seriously. Note the spate of comments last week about overlaps between Huckabee and Edward’s appeal.
What's an Establishment to do? We now have the answer: Bloomberg. liberal on social issues, safe on bank account issues.
There is only one problem. We are now facing economic crises (plural) that are unprecedented in scope. FDR's "arsenal of democracy" can't even produce adequate bullet-proof vests and Hummers. The Red States are bearing the brunt of IRAQ casualties. The large, home-owning middle and even lower class have the bulwark of stability in our society and now that class is in fact facing the worst home-owning crisis since the Great Depression. In fact it may even be worse because the numbers and percentages of home-owners is so much greater than the Great Depression.
Bill Clinton was an ideal Establishment candidate but if she is to win the Dem nomination, Hillary will perforce adopt the anti-establishment, populist positions and even Mark Penn is smart-enough to figure out that playing safe and searching for a non-existent middle isn't going to work.
The "center can not hold" so all of a sudden slouching towards Bethlehem is Michael Bloomberg. He may not be some kind of “beast.” But he certainly is no FDR. We need an FDR to do battle with the “economic royalists.”
Of course, Bloomberg is not a conspiracy unless you understand the Establishment is a conspiracy by its nature. It’s never about us, its always about them. Or, as the Matt Damon, Skull and Bones certified, Establishment model character, put it so aptly in "The Good Sheppard; "It's our country, everybody else is a visitor."
John Klotz
http://johnklotz.blogspot.com
