The Alcohol Party

[Daveparts still]

The Alcohol Party
By David Glenn Cox


The modern Democratic Party is to Franklin Roosevelt what the modern Republican Party is to Abraham Lincoln. There is little if any resemblance in their politics. Lincoln wouldn’t recognize these guys as Republicans just as FDR wouldn’t recognize these guys as Democrats, so the labels lose their meaning.

In the 1960s the Republican Party had two wings, the Rockefeller Republicans who were moderate on a social agenda, conservative on fiscal policy and hawkish on foreign policy. Then there were the Goldwater Republicans, hard right, quiet members of the John Birch society. They were conservative in all things and firmly believed that the best government was no government.

No government only gets you Somalia with bandits and pirates, so when they said no government they meant only no government programs of assistance. Their goal was a government small enough to be subservient to the business community. The problem they faced was that most Americans were against those policies, especially since the public benefited from government programs. So these Republicans responded by changing the political dialog. They were going to get government off your back because they were compassionate conservatives.

Over time rivers change their course, great trees grow and then fall away. To get elected Bill Clinton called himself a centrist Democrat which was in fact a Rockefeller Republican. The Republican Party answered by going further and further to the right until what we have in this country is two wings of one party, the Clinton Republicans and the Cheneyists.

If you think health care reform was a victory for Democrats, ask yourself this: WWHTD? What would Harry Truman do? Truman introduced national health care legislation in 1948 that would later be used as the model for Medicare. The current legislation took single payer off the table on day one. Like a Soviet-style Duma, the legislature crafted a bill to fit a corporate party ideology. Imagine that you’re on trial and the judge says, “This will be a free and open fair trial. However, the option of the defendant's innocence will not be discussed.” This is what was done in the health care legislation and the fix was in on day one. The rest of the industrialized world has a single payer model; the United States has moved towards corporate privatization.

Over the course of my life I have been fascinated by the rise of National Socialism in Germany. I was amazed that an intelligent and educated people could be convinced that good was bad and bad was good. This is a funny story, you’ll like this. For fun in the 1920s the fascist brown shirts liked to break up their opponents' political rallies. The brown shirts were what today we would call rednecks and gang member types. Well, breaking up the Social Democrats' rallies or the Catholic Party rallies wasn’t much fun at all, being as they were only a bunch of middle-class old folks, middle manager geek types and housewives.

Then, when they tried to break up the Communist Party rallies, that’s where the fun began. The Communists liked to fight just as much as the National Socialists did. There were plenty of young people in the Communist Party. Suddenly the brown shirts discovered an immortal truth: “It’s only fun to fight if you stand a chance of winning!” Fifty or sixty brown shirts kicked in the doors to a meeting hall only to be confronted by three hundred young Communists. Not only did the fascists tote home an ass kicking, but also the crowd loved it!

The National Socialists learned from this experience; henceforth they would only break up their own rallies. Half of the brown shirts would kick in the door shouting Communist slogans and the other half would defend the stage and the speakers. It was the original wrestlemania. Of course like any good stage play the good guys would win and the speaker would take the podium with a torn jacket or blood running from his nose and say, “Do you see? Do you see the danger? Do you see what could happen? Do you understand now that only National Socialism can protect you from Communism?” The crowd loved it, political theater in the round, Cheney-style.

History is like a river, there is nothing that happens that isn’t related to all other events. You can’t run a mile down the bank and pronounce it a new river. It’s still the same river and the same politics. What you see in front of you is political theater; it’s all wrestlemania. Now imagine just for the sake of argument that you used your influence to get George W. Bush elected President of the United States. Say you picked up the phone and called the Supreme Court and told them what you wanted. Now, looking from that perspective, was the Presidency of George W. Bush a success or a failure?

The rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Wages for working people went flat, defense expenditures soared and the neocon dream of a two-theater war was achieved. The Patriot Act was passed and civil liberties curtailed. The economic collapse effectively makes possible a continued wealth transfer from the middle class to the investment class; so from that perspective the Presidency of George W. Bush was a raging success. Except the public was very upset and very angry and the election was coming up. So what do you do? What would you do if you held the power behind the throne?

The Republicans were in for a hammering at the ballot box no matter who ran because the public was upset by the antics of an inarticulate, arrogant, smirking cowboy. Now what sort of candidate would be the antithesis of George W. Bush? He or she would have to be articulate and friendly, a well-educated man or woman of the people, sort of. Very friendly, kindly with a nice smile and maybe even with a nice family ala Kennedy. Now how would you hedge that bet? How would you make sure that your guy wins?

You could run a real old guy against him, a guy with a reputation for having a bad temper. A guy with a history of running poor Presidential campaigns. Then, as the general election is moving closer and the old crank is still within striking distance, you pull from your bag of tricks… a nobody! Someone with no national political experience whatsoever. A kook, a screwball, but where could you find someone willing to sacrifice their whole political career for a day trip on the Titanic? The key would be to find someone with office that doesn’t have a lot of money and then you promise them to exchange one for the other.

You get your new guy elected and he continues the Bush agenda but with a friendly smile. Wall Street is happy with the free money policy, the health care industry is happy. GM and Chrysler got their debts and pension liabilities erased so they’re happy. The wars continue and are even expanded so the neocons are happy.

Only the Cheneyists and most of the real Democrats aren’t happy. The Cheneyists don’t like extended unemployment benefits or government subsidies for the poor, but they never have. They don’t care that private industry will benefit by corporatizing the health care in America. They are social Darwinists like the National Socialists; they believe if you get sick and can’t afford a doctor you should just die. The Clinton Republicans believe that if you get sick and can’t afford a doctor the government should pay a private corporation to insure you, and then if you can’t afford co-pays or deductibles, well then, see option one.

So how do you handle the problem of the disenfranchised and the dispossessed? You create your own party of so-called disenfranchised and they hold rallies and scream, “The Communist’s are taking over,” when it's glaringly obvious the opposite is true. The most obvious sign that these groups are a fraud is the broken clock rule, even a broken clock is correct twice a day. But these Cheneyists and freebooters are always wrong. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, which means they are being led to the wrong answers. Who would lead them to the wrong answers?

Health care reform is too expensive but the war in Afghanistan is protecting our freedom.

"Obama nationalized the car industry," they shout, when Obama castrated the unions and gave GM a boarding pass for China. Funny how the reasons are always anything but corporate America’s fault, isn’t it? The Democratic Congress and Democratic administration's recommended cure for unemployment is tax cuts and their cure for toxic assets is a fire sale so the big banks can buy back their assets with no-cost financing and for pennies on the dollar. Their cure for the mortgage crisis is to leave it up to the big banks to settle the matter.

Let me ask a brutally sharp question: do you think the National Socialists came to power in Germany honestly? Once in power could they have been voted out of office? Do you think tea parties just happened spontaneously? That someone isn’t putting up money for deposits and sound systems? That the permits just fall out of the sky? That the media attention and scrutiny is genuine and not pure Vince McMahon? This is wrestlemania and the chosen guy is always going to win. This is a political safety valve of a fascist state it is a clown circus. “Oh, you think the government is corrupt? You sound like a tea partier!” Theater for the easily amused.

Instead what is needed to counter them is an alcohol party. Alcohol burns going down and alcohol is incendiary. Alcohol makes you speak the truth when politeness says to tell a lie. Coffee and tea are nice for conversation but alcohol really gets things moving, and with enough alcohol there is no telling where it will end up. Maybe that’s a scary thought, but what is really scary is where it will go if we do nothing about it.

“It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.” Joseph Stalin

[ensho]

1. alcohol will also get you STDs and pregnant

and you throw up alot

[Usrename]

2. Are we talking beer and wine here?

Or whiskey and rum?

[starroute]

3. A little less politeness would certainly go a long way

I don't know if there's any way to cut through the determination of the MSM to cover 500 overweight and middle-aged Tea Partiers and call it a movement while ignoring 100,000 anti-war progressives -- but if there is, providing some genuine color and spectacle seems like the tack to take.

And that means no giant puppets and no "Free Tibet" -- but a far more focused message about the ways things are right here and right now, with genuinely outraged people to convey it.

But the concentration of money on the right and its lock on the media remain the biggest obstacles. Hitler didn't succeed with his little putsch in 1923, but he succeeded after that because the money people started funding him and paving his way to power.

That's always the nature of fascist coups. They're not outside revolutions. They come from the people who already have power and want to be sure of keeping it.

In this context, the way that money is being thrown at Sarah Palin really makes me nervous. As I suggested on another thread, it implies that some very wealthy people are out to provide her with a war chest and are using things like the Learning Channel and California State University to launder their donations so they can't be traced back to them.

In other words, it's not the Tea Partiers themselves we should be looking at, or even the Republican operatives who are trying to co-opt them. It's the equivalent of the wealthy ultra-conservatives who launched Reagan's political career, or Fritz Thyssen and the other German industrialists who started funding the Nazi Party in 1923.

The Koch brothers have gotten a lot of attention lately because of their visible connections to the Tea Parties. But what I want to know about is any lower-profile billionaires who are doing the same thing far more quietly.

[lib_wit_it]

7. Great points in response to an excellent OP. K&R it all!

[the other one]

4. The Pot Party

Real change

[Daveparts still]

5. That Would be

the idea, real, spelled "Real Change" Since 2000 the United States has been the militarily aggressive nation on Earth. Economically it has pillaged it's own economy for the advancement of 5% and the detriment of 95%. Many people don't understand we are lending the banks a dollar for one quarter of a penny interest then taxpayer must sell treasury note for 3.5 cents interest for each dollar it lends for a quarter of a penney. The taxpayer is subsidizing the banks for 3.25 cents for every dollar they borrow.

That nice Mr. Obama could direct that money to rescuse mortgages but instead leaves the banks in charge. Now your $200,000 that you put $50,000 down on and then made payments on for five years goes into default. Why should the bank help you? The bank will write off $140,000 in taxes and then borrow $140,000 more for $350 dollars plus they get your home to resell.

The FDIC is selling mortgage properties for .22 cents on the dollar with zero percent financing. Your $200,000 home could be had for $44,000.

[silversol]

6. I Can't Wait

for the Convention!

[Daveparts still]

8. 666 reads

and the devil smiles (lol)

[DemReadingDU]

9. I know what we need, but this country is too complacent

We need people to risk their lives, as they did 50-75-100 years ago for safety and better working conditions in the coal mines, construction, factories, firemen, police, etc. Many people today forget the conditions they enjoy, were fought and won by those who belonged to unions. As unions become weaker and non-existent, and people become complacent, conditions become unsafe and corporations take over. Eventually, when people have nothing, then they will risk their lives because there won't be anything else to lose.

I don't see this for awhile, but it's coming. I worry for the life that my toddler grandchildren will be living when they are my age, assuming they survive.