Reply #95: I've met a few good ones in my day, as well.

[Goldstein1984]

But, as a general rule that's guided me well for 53 years, people who crave wealth and power, for the sake of wealth and power, are the last ones who should be trusted with wealth and power.

I agree that exposing reality is a useful tactic. The American Dream is the mythology used to deceive us into believing the only difference between the few and the many is that the few worked hard enough to become one of the few. All of us can be among the few. Expose that American narrative as a myth, and many who endure the system the pursue the dream cease to be followers and worshipers of the few.

The exposure of Geithner as a conspirator with the few is another victory. In another OP today, a DUer revived awareness of an article on the DLC website where Obama proclaims himself to be a "New Democrat." Admitting to ourselves that Bill Clinton was nothing but a trickle down, free trade Neoconservative is liberating. We on the left how our own cults of personality to toss off.

An entire generation born and raised in the post-1980 world was never exposed to the Democratic Party that gave us the New Deal, the Civil Rights Movement, and an end to the Vietnam War. They've been indoctrinated with Neoconservative politics and Neoliberal economics. If they haven't studied history, they don't even know what is possible. They have no frame of reference with which to recognize how far off course the Democratic Party has gone.

I think the move of the Democratic Party to the Right, whether you call it "The Third Way," or the "DLC Way" or just plain old "Centrist" or "Moderate" democratic thought, is really nothing more than evidence that the economic elite have captured the party and have been erasing the distinction between the two parties, so that, no matter the outcome of an election, as long as people are following a party platform they pose no threat.

We have an entire generation of party faithful suffering from the Stockholm Syndrome. They are hostages to a corrupt system.