It is my hypothesis that what happens in November is really just theatre. The Democratic leadership handed control to the Ultra-Right in 2006, and the chances of regaining control are quantumly small to nil.
I invite REASONED and RATIONAL opposing views to my premise. Claims that I am "helping the GOP win", am a Freeper, a conspiracy theorist etc, will not be persuasive. I have postulated a hypothesis, based on the evidence going back to 1985.
If someone can disprove this hypothesis, I will be a happy man. If you can't disapprove it, then at least show me a credible 1 in 10 chance. I am not averse to hard fights, and love a political punch up, as long as I can get at least 9-1 odds.
Do I spend the last half of my life fighting? Or do I just make the best of that time trying to survive with my loved ones, until they take me to Senior Care Facility #1345, where I spend my last days playing D&D with polyhedral dice made from my own teeth?
As Rachel Maddow would say: Talk me down here.
In 2005-2006 the Democratic leadership of the United States, displaying the craven spinelessness that has become their hallmark over the last few decades, handed control of the government to an ultra-rightwing elite who now are in a position to stop every liberal program, every liberal reform, and the movement for racial/sexual equality, and WILL.
With the confirmation of Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O'Connnor, the supremacy of the pro-corporate, anti-equality, pro-pollution, anti-government, pro-police state Supreme Court was solidified.
While not a lefty by any means, O'Connor would occasionally side with the "liberal" minority to make the occasional case for keeping the government on a path vaguely democratic.
The nomination of Alito, a man well to the right of O'Connor, was a naked and obvious shift of the court to the extreme right.
The Democrats had the votes to filibuster, but lead by Joe Lieberman, they chose not to, and allowed his confirmation.
Yes, Justice Kennedy is still supposed to be the "swing vote" but he helped sell the country to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and foreign governments in the
Citizens United case, having helped subvert democratic election before that in
Bush v. GoreThe war is over. We lost.
Even if we hold the House and Senate in a few weeks (a gloomier proposition by the day) no useful law we might actually pass will survive a trip to the "Alito 5 Abattoir".
Health care reform will be declared unconstitutional, and be dismantled. Any law imposing transparency on elections will suffer the same fate. DADT, which Obama claims to oppose, but is appealing its
de facto repeal, will be upheld. Elizabeth Warren will in be tossed to the streets once the financial reform laws get to Clarence Thomas' inbox.
Any law we get passed will be struck down. Any law out of the Ayn Rand playbook will be upheld.
Given the ages of the current conservative judges on the bench, we have lost the court for at least 20 years, probably 30. Thomas and Scalia will serve until they die, probably in their 90's given the excellent health care they receive at tax-payer expense (care they will prevent tax-payers from getting).
The people likely to retire in the next 5 years are Kennedy and Ginsburg. Both will be replaced with people more conservative, substantially more conservative.
None of this really matters anyway, because only a few more years of the current court will finish the cremation of the Constitution.
And before anyone brings up the last two appointment, it really doesn't matter, both were to the right of the people they replaced. And in Kagen's case, it begins to look like she will side with the Alito gang as well.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/05/08/kaganWith this reality, the game ended for America as a democratic republic in 2006. Liberalism is certainly dead and all the "hope and change" excitement, merely the random twitching all corpses experience.
Arguably, the first signs of terminal illness began in the 80's with the removal of our "Fairness Doctrine". This, along with the rapid metastasis of media consolidation, resulted in malignant masses appearing at multiple sites within a decade. These sites continued to multiply and became so large they got their own names:
Rush Limbaugh
Dr. Laura
Sean Hannity
Glenn Beck
Michael Savage
Ann Coulter
etc.
And of course, the biggest malignancy of all: Rupert Murdoch (there are also the "semi-hidden" but just as deadly tumors: Koch, Scaife. Coors, et al).
At this point, there is, for all practical purposes, no hope. A slim chance has been mentioned, an untried radical procedure which would involve excising Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy from the SCOTUS by impeachment, The procedure was proposed after a biopsy of the <i>Bush v. Gore</i> tumor by prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, but not a single Democrat has ever show a stomach for the procedure.
http://archive.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=4018This leaves the corpse of the USA to now be brought back to life as a corporate zombie, a figurative personification of a corporation, masquerading as a theocracy. Because the corporatists know that by pandering to the religiously insane, they neutralize a potential problem of opposition by religious zealots, who are, after all, dangerously insane, and might start walking up to CEOs with bombs strapped to their chest. Prayer will "return" to schools, creationism will be taught, women returned to subservient status as breeding stock, homosexuality re-criminalized, minorities and other dangerous "subversives" jailed and "traditional family values" enshrined into law.
Oh yeah, and abortion WILL be outlawed under all circumstances, as will a contraceptives. Yeah, BigPharma won't like that, but they have to avoid limiting the other corporation's customer base. After all, a trillion cigarettes won't smoke themselves. Besides, by removing the FDA and all those pesky rules about drug trials, ethical testing, and informed consent, they won't miss the profits.
(Of course, if a drug were discovered tomorrow that would let you eat anything you wanted without getting fat, or got rid of wrinkles, or grew back hair, BigPharma would move swiftly and baby skull-cracking factories would open up all over Africa, Asia, and Central/South America. Eventually they would open up in U.S. ghettos, but only after a media campaign had been launched to vilify "American jobs lost to cheap foreign imports").
Cynical you say?
Why, thank you, yes I am.
For two decades now the corporate/conservative strategy has been:
1) Block any legislation harmful to profits. If you can't stop it, riddle it with loopholes, then litigate the hell out of it (while simultaneously pushing for laws to eliminate "frivolous" lawsuits).
2) Repeal any legislation harmful to profits
3) When you control the legislative process, pass tax cuts, repeal laws on oversight, and hand out profitable war contracts with as little oversight as possible. Build more privately run prisons, pass more laws to put people in those prisons, wage more wars, build more weapons, etc.
Also, appoint judges sympathetic to, or completely owned by business.
4) When you don't control the legislature, OBSTRUCT, OBSTRUCT, OBSTRUCT any reform, oversight, or criminal prosecution of the players rigging the game. Prevent any judge who is not going to play the game, or who MIGHT not play the game.
5) Discredit any official, politician, or organization that impedes your agenda, or builds true support for helping people vote.
6) Suppress minority and poor voting at all costs.
In the face of these tactics, the Democratic leadership has tepidly supported, tepidly opposed, cowered from, and then even hidden from positions in opposition to these tactics. Worse, in some cases they ACTIVELY collaborated with those same tactics.
Win or lose next month, next term, or beyond, the game has already been decided. Token opposition will be tolerated for a while, to keep up the charade of "democracy", but as soon as prudently possible, this to will be crushed.
And who will oppose the new USA then? Who in the world will stand up to a corporate oligarchy with the largest atomic arsenal in the world backing its mission to "maximize shareholder value"?
I have seen the future, and it is an ICBM with a Wal-Mart logo.
So, please, I am serious, tell me, with reasoned argument, why I am wrong. I do not wish to be, but these conclusions seem compelling and inescapable.