The Horror! Must We Lurch Harder Right to Go Left?

[unhappycamper]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Horror-Must-We-Lurch-by-Robert-S-Becker-Bipartisanship_Democrats_Extremism_Movement-140921-895.html



The Horror! Must We Lurch Harder Right to Go Left?
By Robert S. Becker
OpEdNews Op Eds 9/21/2014 at 11:09:39

However painful the remedy, America the Dense apparently needs another round of 2 X 4's to the head. Despite fiery warnings from the world's best social, economic and scientific analysts -- aghast how many mammoth problems are trivialized, key state voting majorities still buy the faery dust of the failed right. Don't Tea Partiers have slews of educated children desperate for absent career positions? Don't they realize big banks thrive when elected Republicans (and conservative Democrats) call the shots? Hats off to GOP propaganda: worsening conditions are simply wished away, covered over with their perverse version of "Don't Worry, Be Happy," just let the market deliver goodies.

Thus, we endure the Great Yankee Stall. Until the beleaguered, but potent middle class internalizes the huge price of inaction, they won't abandon mindsets so worn-out they make 1950's thinking sparkle with innovation. Worse still, those heroes boasting we all make our own destiny would have to do something, like boycott the machine, even join some anti-Tea Party movement. Only true, sustained, more painful shock and awe cracks the national complacency. Thus, I ask, what if the left's best ploy, however horrible, is have the right hoist itself on its own petard? Machiavelli, expressing much the same stratagem, is at my back. Alternatives are anything but self-evident.

Judging by the last decade, neither thuggish campaigns, nor overbought elections, not even unpopular, regressive policies sanctioned by high court stupors, are turning America from systemic, dynastic calamities. Incompetent elites replay the same mistakes, then stare into the camera, bewildered how their vaunted plans turn to dust. Need stimulus for job growth, then insist on permanent austerity. Battling terrorism, send in counterproductive drones. Want to confront climate change, just deregulate polluters and discourage research.

When since the Gilded Age have super-rich so brazenly defended the rank, privilege, and their laughable social Darwinism? We have brilliantly-articulate dissenters, left and center, who present smart and workable solutions that fall by the wayside. We have scorching cable satirists who nightly spotlight overflowing hypocrisy, yet little changes. We have serious thinkers who honor M. L. King's integrated vision, linking frenzied war-making, low socio-economic mobility, bad government, and discrimination against those not old, white, and self-entitled.

[vi5]

1. No, but that won't stop the "centrists" who run our party from trying.

[Doctor_J]

2. And when they lurch to the right and lose, they'll blame it on the lefties

Not a lot of surprises in this whole fiasco. If the party apparatchik really believe that Obama's 70 million 2008 voters wanted "centrism", they are really really dumb.

[vi5]

3. "THE LEFT DIDN'T VOTE!!!!"

"Never mind that there's no evidence or data to support that, we'll keep screaming about it over and over again!!!!"

"OBAMA CAN'T DO ANYTHING WITHOUT A SUPERMAJORITY IN THE SENATE! AND BY SUPERMAJORITY WE MEAN 99 DEMOCRATIC SEATS!!!!!"

[OnyxCollie]

4. The one Republican Senator will threaten a filibuster,

and the rest will compromise in the name of bipartisanship.

[vi5]

5. I posted this last week...

But there was a repeat of the Simpsons and the exchange went:

Nelson: My mom needs the money now that they did away with Social Security

Bart: I can't believe that passed with 99 Democratic Senators.

Nelson: Yeah, that 1 Republican really knows how to get his way.

Sadly, this was barely a parody.

[MisterP]

8. Nader did 9-11 and Lebanon!

[Doctor_J]

9. Liebermann!

everything that Obama's not gotten done is Holy Joe's fault!

[MisterP]

10. it *would* be strange to live in a universe where Dem loyalists always blamed anyone but Nader

"Harold Ford made us go back to Iraq!"
or perhaps Holy Jane Harmon?

[rickford66]

6. The GOP doesn't need to win elections.

By grooming crazier nut jobs they move the rest of us to the right to get more of their votes and to compromise. Going "left" we lose elections and going "right" we compromise our beliefs.

[blkmusclmachine]

7. All the DEMS do is triangulate or make bad deals with the GOP. The GOP wins, and it doesn't need a

majority, either. The DEM "leadership" is either the goddamn stupidest, or most corrupt, pack of liars...you decide.