The barnstorming charge here rushing to defend the deplorable TPP

[DirkGently]

138. It's not people saying it that make parties "the same."

It's the parties' actions that are too often the same.

What's being sold by an unfortunate faction of our own party is the idea that mildly less oppressive social policy is the only area open for debate. Fiscal policy; taxation; ownership; regulation of business -- that is intended to be taken off the table forever, the decisions made for us by the "real" constituency of our political leaders -- namely billionaires able to write unlimited campaign checks.

We are being dragged, an inch at a time, toward open ownership of government by monied private interests. This is where we get the sudden surge of wisdom that SS and Medicare are unsustainable, that home ownership and retirement benefits are not realistic expectations for working people in the days ahead. That maybe we don't even own small things like automobiles or computer programs or audio / visual content that we buy.

Everything will be a license, a lease -- a temporary right to exist, subject to the whims and greed of the real owners.

We are being dragged toward a 21st century serfdom, and too many of the people elected by us, funded by us, who exist and have power only through the sufferance of the people, have decided that things just don't work that way, and that elections simply determine who will be working for the financial firms and energy giants for the next little while.

It's not going to work, but the longer it goes on, the uglier the backlash will be.