Some thoughts on the political situation
Friday, 13. November 2009, 12:59:18
Well, he and the democrats seem to be in charge, which is good. So good, in fact, that I almost thought there'd be no reason to even get back into politics.
But then I read a Paul Krugman essay about the radical right taking over the republican party (which doesn't worry me much), and it occurred to me-the democrats are WAY right of where they used to be. In fact, it's like they surrender a little ideological turf as the right wing PR machine gets stronger and stronger in order to cater to voters. Probably a sound strategy for winning votes, as people are getting duped left and right (no pun intended) in the United States, but yet, something's very very wrong about this. If the trend continues, with the nutjobs pulling the whole country in the direction of fascism (mind you, we're not there yet, and probably weren't even in the Bush Administration), we're going to be in dire straights soon.
And another thing-something I got out of reading On Empire was that the USA is sorta a pseudo-empire more so than a shadow empire, as I believed previously. There's differences-much like, despite moving towards fascism, we're not fascist or going to become that. But we may wind up in a pseudo-fascist setup, which sounds nasty. What's irritating about this situation is there's no word for a pseudo-empire (pseudo-empire being a horrible way of describing things), and should we wind up swinging back to the right, we won't quite be fascist, but something new altogether without a name. And in absence of such a name, most will believe us to be the democracy we keep repeating ourselves to be. When we're actually, thanks to the past century or so worth of PR bombardment we've experienced, more like a subverted democracy. What we actually are at this point is impossible to tell, but I get the feeling that if a lot of us want to actually become a democracy it'll require a lot more vigilance and effort towards maintaining such a system than is currently happening. I just glanced at the wikipedia list of governments, and cannot really say for sure what the hell we are-though I think a lot of people are trying to sway opinion by proving to people that we're, say, a kleptocracy (rule by thieves, I think). Which is an argument you can easily make and defend, but it doesn't feel quite so dead on. Also I can think of arguments for that type or probably four or five others off the top of my head, and all the while realizing that we're a representative democracy (a sort of Republic Lite) on paper. This is a cute, and powerful, rhetorical tool, but I don't know if it's an accurate portrayal of the truth so much as a persuasive opinion argument that'll probably be made irrelevant in wake of other people making equally powerful arguments for other systems...
The first step in retaking the country from the folks ruining it is to determine exactly the nature of the problem. Right now it's not even clear what's being looked at. I think the second step would be to determine what people want collectively and to begin pursuing that...but i'm just musing on things right now.



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