DemocracyMouse
DemocracyMouse's Journal"Infrastructure" not "Socialism"
Instead of the duality "socialism vs capitalism" can we start pitching "infrastructure FOR a people's economy"?
A healthy infrastructure of trains, bridges, education, social services and representative government – with the US Constitution at its core – presents a bullseye image where the inner infrastructure supports a non-monopolistic people's economy.
Democrats have understood this intuitively and the economy – the outermost ring – has thrived under Democratic presidents. By reframing the debate we can own the concept that Democrats are better at managing the economy. Stimulus spending on the infrastructure during the Great Depression and the recent Great Recession lead to significant recoveries. The formula is as old as the hills and is even in the Old Testament.
The tiresome oppositional approach – which Republicans goad us into taking – is a rhetorical trap. As my father, an economist, used to say: "Humans wear many hats." We're both cooperative and competitive, builders and reformers, property owners and people sharing a commons. So for the New Year ahead, can we establish an image of nested systems –with the US Constitution as the central operating system? It suggests something positive, anchoring and functional.
The knee jerk Republican effort to destroy the social, physical and institutional supports at the CENTER of our system looks a whole lot worse when we reframe welfare, democratic institutions, education, net neutrality, etc., as infrastructure and not as "socialism."
I hope this makes sense. It's the kind of language and vision change we may need to work on within Democratic circles – a kind of talking point.
New Language for the New Year
Instead of the duality "socialism vs capitalism" can we start pitching "infrastructure for a people's economy"?
A healthy infrastructure of trains, bridges, education, social services and representative government – with the US Constitution at its core – presents a bullseye image where one supports the other. Democrats have understood this intuitively and the economy – the outermost ring – has thrived under Democratic presidents. By reframing the debate we can own the concept that Democrats are better at managing the economy. Keynesian stimulus spending on the infrastructure during the Great Depression and the recent Great Recession lead to significant recoveries. The formula is as old as the hills and is even in the Old Testament (raise taxes during good times, increase spending during hard times).
The tiresome oppositional approach – which Republicans goad us into taking – is a rhetorical trap leading to futility. As my father, an economist, used to say: "Humans wear many hats." We're both cooperative and competitive, builders and reformers, property owners and people sharing a commons. So for the New Year ahead, can we establish an image of nested systems –with the US Constitution as the central operating system? It suggests something positive, anchoring and functional.
The knee jerk Republican effort to destroy the social, physical and institutional supports at the center of our system can then be more easily seen as an attempt to throw us back to the middle ages. Feudalism anyone?
In the sense that I'm using it, infrastructure includes both hard and soft systems: trains, bridges, court houses, education and bank regulations alike.
Vaudeville vs Villainy II
The Russians have landed. Kompromat is easy in the USA, especially among liberals who seem eager to shoot down men, not for actual sexual assault, but for vaudeville and clumsy flirting. My girlfriend is calling this wave of overreaction a new "red menace." Republican operatives and trolls can send a few hints to colleagues of any targetted progressive and whoosh! Let the gossip percolate!
The newly fallen victims of American Kompromat:
—NPR's Leonard Lopate for risqué talk after work with colleagues from another department.
—Detroit's progressive, pulitzer prize-winning Stephen Henderson for flirting after hours.
— NPRs Garrison Keillor for unwanted advances.
Surely the O'Reilly's and Weinstein's of the world deserved to be removed from their posts, but the recent stories sound too flimsy to warrant the punishments meted out.
Why fire the the clumsy Vaudevillians when you could be going after the actual VILLAINS: the THOUSANDS of CEOs, HR staff, lawyers, bankers and accountants, male and female, who engineer and enable the non-living wages of millions. Those people cause hunger, strife and broken families. THAT's abuse – and come to think of it, when people are hungry, holding down several jobs, and sleeping in their offices, their sexuality is more than assaulted, it's completely extinguished.
In contrast, what have our media heroes done? Many have shed light on such injustice. They may have also made a number of foolish remarks, an awkward pass or two, a clumsy photo shoot. But surely they can be handled through other means –suspension, sensitivity training, etc. I've had female bosses and co-workers make passes at me, place their head in my lap and break into tears, jump on my lap to share a car ride, take revenge on me when I rejected advances, make rude comments about my underwear.... but not once did I ever call for their being fired.
If the women's movement can't draw the line and direct its energy to real abuses of power, the growing oligarchy will turn us all back into peasants. And THAT's a condition where sexual assault will fluorish.
Franken's Vaudeville vs Trump's Villainy
Has anyone noticed the schism between the arts and the political sciences playing out in the Franken story?
Al Franken was, and still is, a member of the creative, emotionally skilled, and often humorous classes. Political science types, however, have skills of a different kind. No wonder Al's vaudevilian send-up of groping, which in essence was a satire, was taken literally by many politicos. Furthermore his overt, affectionate photo ops were distorted into something which prompted him to say "I remember those incidents differently." He never got his ethics review after his incredibly tender admission that maybe someone, somewhere was hurt by something he did. Until that point few public figures had handled such accusations so well. And Al's were even spearheaded by political operatives like Tweeden and Roger Stone who were associated with the increasingly debased and corrupted Republican Party.
As we continue to withdraw funding for the arts from our schools, and as the contemporary arts of motion picture production and internet publishing lags behind traditional arts instruction, we may be creating a nation of emotional and aesthetic illiterates. I cannot explain Al's media lynching in any other way.
Another thing: Franken is Jewish and his huggy body language may be untranslatable to many of the white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants who make up a large percentage of the Senate.
Our country must separate the creative vaudevillians from the actual villains or we will go insane. We need serious emotional development and cultural evolution. As the machines advance, we seem to conclude "more courses in computer programming!" But what we need, I believe, is media, design, humor and cultural literacy.
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Name: Mouse de la SoulGender: Do not display
Hometown: New Jersey
Home country: USA
Member since: Sat Dec 9, 2017, 01:41 PM
Number of posts: 2,275
