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Labour Party in UK vs. Republican Party in US When it comes to comparing the economies of the United Kingdom and the United States, it's safe to say that the Brits are blessed with their Labour government, and we're cursed with our Republican hegemony. The Labour Party has launched a clever ad campaign touting the fact that under Labour's leadership the UK has: * the lowest unemployment in 29 years Contrast that with the fact that under Bush the US has: * the largest federal deficit in U.S. history Take note. The UK and the US: both are in the same global economy, both are Western nations, both are in NATO, both are in the G7. The UK puts liberals in charge and things go well economically; we reject a liberal-moderate (Gore) and put in a far-right conservative, and our economy turns rotten. DeanForChair.com Here's how: 1. Go to DeanForChair.com, a website created by my friends Bob Zuckerman and Matt Carlin, and read both "Why Howard Dean?" and my interview with Ethan Geto, the former New York State director for Dean's presidential campaign, whose insights on Gov. Dean will give you a great sense of why he should lead the DNC. 2. Then go to DraftHoward.com and send a letter to your state's DNC members, encouraging them to vote for Dean for DNC chair in February!
Ethan Geto: "[Howard Dean represents] the part of the party that stands up for progressive values and doesn't waver or apologize for its core values, and doesn't try to be Republican-lite.... The only way we're going to win elections is by presenting a vision for the country that offers a distinct contrast to the right-wing Republican agenda....[W]e need to be clear about who we are and what we believe. Certainly we need language and messages and candidates that can speak to the majority of Americans." Translating anger into action No body armor...and no maps? The joke's on us Dear Abby, The above is dark humor, a la 1930's Berlin, like a cabaret joke in the style of "sad-but-true," ineffectual tittering endured by the brownshirts so long as they're still a small fraction of the audience. It is a pathetic but all-too-human way to cope with the reality that there were once no brownshirts at all. Given the current growth and solidification of the Right's hegemony in the face of uninspiring resistance, there will be little of America's soul left by 2008. There will be only the outer vestiges, symbols, and hagiographies, joined with politicians and the media's empty rhetoric--all assuring us of "Democracy," but doing so really in order to suggest that that democracy, which we will be told is strong, is also under threat. And under threat from the outside, not from within (except for gays, Peace Corps workers, rap musicians, and people calling themselves "progressives"). It's what's known in the trade as a diversion. Ike would be surprised, and probably disappointed. Like all his presidential predecessors--a privately-agnostic, mainline Protestant with a pre-television worldview--he couldn't have expected Big Business and Pentagon to become reinforced by Temple--Christian fundamentalists and conservatives in the evangelical, Roman Catholic, Jewish, and Mormon flocks--and Media--virtually entirely corporate-owned or even designed (or "reformed") as ideologically conservative organs projecting skewed facts, disingenuous tales, partisan opinions...anything but the whole truth. He'd also be surprised, maybe impressed (he appreciated a clever plan when he saw one), to find that Big Business had moved into the coup d'état market by controlling voting. Eighty percent of all votes nationwide are counted on machines owned by two companies, both of which are owned by brothers of the same family, and who give hugely to the political party Ike decided, with all the passion or a coin toss, to affiliate with. So we joke. We joke because we have to, because there is no organized opposition, certainly. Democrats' ineffectualness yesterday in Congress during the certification of the Electoral College votes was shameful and distressing. Senators Boxer, Clinton, Durbin, and Obama were the only Dems taking the procedural interruption to the electoral certification seriously, and far worse, were basically the only ones taking the entire idea of election reform seriously enough to try something, anything, to get The Peoples' attention. Some Democratic Senators even publicly scolded Boxer for undermining the American peoples' faith in Democracy. The chambers were nearly empty during the debate. No protest occurred. No Capital steps press conference by Democrats. The Visitors Gallery was all but empty. Equally as bad, the questioning of Bush's Attorney General nominee, Gonzales, was a pathetic display of sycophancy by Senators Biden and Schumer. Gonzales essentially advised Bush that the torture of prisoners was okay, that the Geneva Convention was "quaint"--the actual term used. To give credit for a good performance where credit's due, Salon.com reports that, "Leahy pursued [Gonzales] aggressively on a number of issues, including his vetting, such as it was, of [fail Homeland Security nominee] Bernard Kerik. [Ted] Kennedy came at him again and again on torture and the Geneva Convention. And [Lindsey] Graham, a Republican, questioned Gonzales sharply even though he said he intended to vote to confirm him." After that, the curtain came down; the players exited in time for cocktails. So the Business-Temple-Military-Media complex is here--mature, ravenous, needing to always consume lest it begin to die. The Vietnam [Undeclared] War was its tempestuous adolescence. Now, it would rather launch a global war between Christianized America and the Muslim world, or do away with the Bill of Rights, or do anything, than perish. It is not keen on self-sacrifice. Of this I am sure: things will get worse before they get better, and the scarring will be permanent. We can only hope that somehow--perhaps through the workings of "nature's God" invoked by the signers of the Declaration of Independence?--their can be a redemption of the adversities, lost opportunities, inequities, and injustices endured now and that will be endured more grievously yet, perhaps soon, by The People. If it is not nature's God that will redeem, it will have to be The People themselves. If they fulfill Benjamin Franklin's seldom-quoted prediction and eventually willingly submit to tyranny, the challenge of redemption might become too great, and only an ending will suffice, a wiping of the slate clean. In my optimistic moments, I think such a fate will never occur; America will adapt and redefine as necessary, eventually even surviving the loss of the empire we now deny we're building, and--as was the case with several former empires--becoming a people defined by more than power and conflict, and instead by contributions to harmony and civilization, becoming a people who take and give back from the world in a more balanced manner. Empires either adapt thusly, as did England, or they disappear altogether, as did Persia, as did Rome. The Romans were essentially given a choice: keep your republic, or submit to Caesar, and in compensation get free bread and blood sports. They chose the bread and blood, and suffered under the whims of sometimes insane tyrants for generations. (But my, they built great aqueducts!) I hope that there will quickly emerge a "loyal opposition" to our current regime in the U.S., to counter the course of events before The People are ever given such a choice by this or the next fear-and-cynicism regime, for I share Franklin's pessimism, and worry about what choice we would make. |
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