"Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?" William Greider cries that his institutions have failed him, long live his institutions. His government has betrayed him. How will it save him?
Society faces dreadful prospects and profound transformation. When both parties are aligned with corporate power, who will stand up for the people? Who will protect them from the insatiable appetites of capitalist enterprise and help them get through the hard passage ahead? One thing we know for sure from history: there is no natural limit to what capitalism will seek in terms of power and profit. If government does not stand up and apply the brakes, society is defenseless.When was the last time you stood up to apply the brakes? What have brakes got to do with appetites. Confused metaphors indicated confused thinking. "When both parties . . . " Aw, it's so nice to be with you Frodo, here at the end of all fucking stuff and things. Even for an American liberal, this is desperately self-limiting. On the most practical level, taking that old whore history as our sibyl, it seems awfully unlikely that the two American parties in their present forms and organization will persist for more than another couple of decades. A reorganization appears to me to be pretty inevitable. The current alignment of interests and affinities is out-of-date. Here is something you can bank on: the government will still reflect the interests of the powerful.
The conviction that "representative democracy" and "capitalism" do, ever did, or ought to exist in tension, the one with the other, is wrong. They are complementary parts of the same social order, the same civic religion. If state capitalism is our religion, then representative democracy is our mass, the voting booth the site of miraculous transubstantiation. "Left-liberals", as Greider calls them (honestly, how many dbas can one fucking business have?), can howl all they want about the excesses of their priests and popes, but as long as they go on genuflecting to the old gods and idols, their exclamations about change are worthless.
18 comments:
Yes, indeedy, I can see the collapse of the Donklephant Party/ies in the near future. Probably to be replaced by the Freikorps and the Spartacist League.
Speaking of durable institutions, Greider is a freak of nature. Playing the same broken record -- one encoding songs composed by oneself -- for three decades is a feat not explicable vy science.
vy=by
Standing up to apply brakes sounds like kids' bikes.
LAMA SABACTHANI, yo.
Well, CTHULHU FHTAGN to you too.
And yet, do we not need an organizing principle?
A reorganization appears to me to be pretty inevitable. The current alignment of interests and affinities is out-of-date. Here is something you can bank on: the government will still reflect the interests of the powerful.
Ahh, you had me hopeful there for a sec and then you killed it. Well, I hope the new capitalist parties are at least entertaining.
"Here is something you can bank on: the government will still reflect the interests of the powerful."
Tautological IOZ. If the government were to reflect the interests of those who are not (currently) powerful, they inevitably would become so.
vy=by/bs
So your anarchist cant trumps Greider small-reformist cant?
I don't know about that, but my anarchist can't definitely does.
Anarchists can can cans while doing The can-can!
IOZ now that you seem to have abandoned le digs can you please take aim at the useless tool Josh Marshall and his craptastic website of misinfotainment?
At the very least set your sites on the equally shitty Steve Benen.
IOZ now that you seem to have abandoned le digs can you please take aim at the useless tool Josh Marshall
Pleeeze, NOOO.
Just about all I know about these fuckers is the negative consequence of finding the people who hate them, like IOZ, for instance, so immensely entertaining. Increasingly, I resent so much that they occupy any place in my imagination at all, that I am seriously considering taking a break from political blogs entirely.
Please continue to ignore La Digs. Please also consider ignoring everyone who writes for the Nation and the New York Times.
Not to change the subject or anything, but Johnny Weir's memoir has come out, and he's come out along with it.
Andy Mellon told Hoover to "liquidate, liquidate, liquidate" so Stalin takes up that advice and he's been the butt of unending scorn ever since.
Sometimes you just can't win.
"If state capitalism is our religion, then representative democracy is our mass, the voting booth the site of miraculous transubstantiation."
Possibly your best metaphor evar
"If government does not stand up and apply the brakes, society is defenseless."
This is like inviting the rapist into your house, then whining and crying when the rapist well ... rapes you.
Increasingly, I resent so much that they occupy any place in my imagination at all, that I am seriously considering taking a break from political blogs entirely.
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