yeah, i was gonna do some econ updates this weekend

[solarbird]

...but I didn't. Shit's getting weird out there, though. Be very careful this week.

But that's not why I didn't do that. Mostly I got distracted and pissed off by the revelation that Mr. Obama's closure of Mr. Bush's secret prison system didn't include all the secret prisons - just the ones the CIA was running - and that there are now reports coming out of abuse and torture from these still-operational "black" prison sites. There are reportedly no plans to shutter these prisons. It's all relevant because there have been suggestions to transfer the remaining Gitmo population to Bagram, which apparently has one of these secret prisons nearby.

So really, it looks like it was all just one more big fat fucking lie. With bullshit like this continuing to steam on, you really can't be too surprised that 40% of self-identified Democrats in this week's DailyKOS poll say they are likely (25%) or certain (15%) to sit out the 2010 elections, something Washington Monthly calls "a wake-up call."

Of course, these aren't the only complaints - hell, they aren't even mentioned in the Washington Monthly piece! But I like Corrente's commentary, here:

Working people see bailouts for the banksters, but nothing for them, whether on housing or jobs; we're almost a full year into the year of Hope and Change, and only now is Obama even holding a summit on jobs, in the worst employment situation since the Great Depression. And that's before we get to bailing out the insurance companies through what used to be laughingly called "health care reform," and before we go on to looting Social Security and cutting Medicare treatment under the guise of "entitlement reform."

People are not. happy. I wonder whether the political class will notice or care?

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Time we made them notice. Not sure how; certainly the ballot box has no effect, and I'd rather not use high speed lead unless absolutely necessary.

I *think* we have the tools at our fingertips. We just gotta figure out how to use'em.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

That's just it. I have the gut feeling that we have the necessary tools to make the changes we need, but I can't figure out what they actually are, or how to best make use of them. Frustrating, to say the least.

[avram]

The traditional tools are protest marches and labor strikes.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

I don't think the Traditional Tools are the ones that will get results in this day and age. I've got some Union associates, and I know that their Strikes have been less and less effective in recent times. Protest Marches these days seem to just be media spectacles, with no other result, since not enough people actually have the attention span to care whether or not it actually worked.

Moreover...

[tahkhleet.livejournal.com]

...since the Reagan years and the creation of the myth that only the worthless are unemployed, people are more frantic than ever not to be jobless. Particularly given the uncertainty of the situation. There may well be laws against hiring scabs. Want to bet any money they'll stick when no one wants to obey them except union members?

And I agree with Westrider, street protests are just preaching to the choir. It may get the choir motivated to do stuff but the problem here is frankly, we're outnumbered. The Democrats do not have a majority of the electorate and progressives do not have a majority of the Democrats. While theoretically, there are progressive Republicans, they won't cross party lines for the same reason Democratic progressives didn't do that in the Bush years.

I'm thinking what we ought to be looking at is getting a microscope over some of the truly egregious offenses going on and get people pissed to throw everyone in BOTH parties out. The replacement parties will not be perfect, and will in time become corrupt. But the country's going to go to hell for sure if we let this bipartisan oligarchy keep picking the candidates and choosing what laws it obeys.

Re: Moreover...

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

I'm curious what mechanism you think will throw both the major parties out, short of revolution?

[westrider.livejournal.com]

I realize in hindsight that I got more than a little carried away during the last Presidential election. It was the first time since I came to voting age that I actually felt that there might be something to hope hope for, some one who was actually worth voting for, rather than simply voting against the worst choice.

In retrospect, making that mark may go down as one of the worst choices of my life. I dislike Obama almost as much as I disliked Bush, and for most of the same reasons.

Puts me in mind of what a guy I know said about Voting for Obama: "Hey, at least this time, we'll get fucked over by someone with some style."

[kvogel.livejournal.com]

There is an almost Polyanna-esque little spark in me that wonders if Obama might have actually meant most of what he said, but once in office discovered how little real power he has over entrenched interests. A scary/ugly parallel to JFK versus the Joint Chiefs+CIA (James W. Douglass's book is nightmarish and as close as anyone's gonna get to a realistic what,who,why about all that)

[westrider.livejournal.com]

I might believe that if it hadn't been for the FISA vote before he was elected. That really should have been my sign to look into Third Parties.

...that's not the half of it...

[tahkhleet.livejournal.com]

...did you look at the fine print on the bailout bill that Obama was so keen to support, the 700Billion one the Republicans voted down the first pass?

It says at the start, first few pages that the Secretary of Treasury makes all the major decisions, no one else has any input, and nothing the Secretary decides can he be prosecuted for. Not "immune from prosecution based on negligence" _immune period_. There is NO defensible reason to have the language in the bill.

There's also the fact that they passed the bill by declaring a legislative precedent called "martial law" (melodramatic language these representatives use eh?) which allowed it to be passed _far_ quicker than it should have been.

Then there's the fact that the bill imposed no auditing requirements on the recipients of funds. The toothless council they appointed to "monitor" the situation in a non binding capacity...they put a female economist in charge whose integrity was beyond question and she said a month or two after that the oversight and transparency were a bad joke and she was totally out of the loop.

This is one of the largest (to that point) single expenditure bills in the history of the USA and Obama took pride in it as a sign that he was on the ball and helping the country.

Right.

Re: ...that's not the half of it...

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I remember seeing that, too (right here, IIRC, actually), but for some reason it's the FISA bill that sticks in my mind as the one that should have been my Wakeup call.

[maellenkleth]

I still hold to my original thesis that there is no substantive distinction between the two American parties: they had might as well be two subdivisions of a sports league for all the practical difference it makes.

Canada's not much better, practically speaking, except that with multiple political parties we do enjoy the advantages of minority government (at least during those periods when the opposition parties aren't corrupted, as they presently seem to be).

Plus the climate scare emails

[(Anonymous)]

The climate scare emails are mostly explainable, sort of, if you believe in tinkerbelle's budget.

Bruce

[pentane.livejournal.com]

They won't notice and they won't care, either.

If you've ever played large corporate politics, it would be obvious why.

[epawtows.livejournal.com]

I have my parents as an example of what the Republicans are turning into. I'm motivated to vote Democrat.

[phillipalden.livejournal.com]

The prison site at Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan hasn't really been much of a secret. Many people knew of it when Bush The Idiot was still in office.

The worry about Bagram, (and other sites,) is that they sit in countries that willingly torture and permanently damage their prisoners.

I think Obama needs a wake-up call, or he will be abandoned by the progressives that supported him in the last election, and we'll end up with another asshole, I mean Republican, President.

[solarbird]

This is the second prison nearby, not the main prison. Both are officially secret, but the black site is more secret than the main prison.

[phillipalden.livejournal.com]

Oh what a tangled web they weave...

[lordperrin.livejournal.com]

Vote third party. Any third party. The more people that do that the more the big 2 will have to change. The people who said voting 3rd party was 'throwing your vote away' are the people who elected this asshole we have now. I dont see ANY other way to affect change. Protests no longer do any good, voting out the incumbent party doesnt do any good because theres no difference between the parties.

[loopback.livejournal.com]

the more people who vote for an unelectable candidate that is a member of a party that gets no equal time and can be easily painted as 'wingnut/extremist' without much effort by an utterly co-opted mass media, the more the big 2 have to change?

I'm not sure I see the connection between those two actions.

...so we need to also...

[tahkhleet.livejournal.com]

...make a point of spreading a grassroots propaganda campaign to explain the the mass media are a bunch of lying bastards. Propaganda just means "information intended to persuade" and by that definition, virtually all information shared that anyone has more emotional investment in than the local weather (and not always that) is propaganda. We have the net. We have huge numbers of people in both parties who were betrayed by the leading candidates. If we had a one term third party whose SOLE GOAL was to smash the existing patronage and bribery structures and prosecute _all_ parties who stole money or abused power, we might be able to scrape a fillibuster proof majority. I don't know anyone who's happy with the current political situation except for a damned millionaire who thinks we're living in utopia.

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

Snowball effect. Get enough people voting and it takes on a life of its own. Whether you like any of these candidates or not, if you combine the people who voted for Perot w/the ones who voted for Nader and the ones who voted for Ron Paul and the more disaffected Hillary supporters, you have the numbers to make it a 3 way race. They'll notice then. And while the candidates and their supporters otherwise don't appear to have much in common (other than maybe a decent overlap 'tween Paul & Perot types for voters, the candidates really weren't that similar), they all have a vested interested in crashing the system. Even two separate alternate candidacies, one left and one right, could throw a wrench in things. Then imagine just enough Greens and Independents and Libertarians getting house memberships so that a coalition would be needed to give either of the major two a majority, and suddenly the disaffected have a real voice.

Not saying it'll be easy or happen overnight, but it beats the fuck out of sitting around and talking about 11 dimensional chess.

[loopback.livejournal.com]

Sure, or we could have the same result when we had a surprising turnout of 3rd party voters during a presidential election that 'were guilty of electing bush'. ie, all the 3rd party people who normally were cast in the role of 'throwing their vote away' were cast instead as the bad guys who were responsible for electing a gibbering idiot who fucked up the country terribly.

the 'snowball effect' only happens if people care. And if people cared, strikes & protests would kick off the snowball effect more rapidly and with greater effect than an election.

Sorry, I see the 'vote for someone else!' as a tactic as just as hollow as anything else.

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

Nader #'s won't be nearly enough; Perot #'s are getting there, tho. Keep in mind he had a real shot at winning for a while there in '92. And people are much more upset about things, because things are a lot lot lot worse, than in '00. I agree, times of relative plenty of are not the best for a 3rd party run.

I am curious what your preferred tactic would be?

Violet at Reclusive Leftist has suggested an "inside/outside" tack; what w/Green Dogs to set off the blue dogs, etc. Have a 3rd Party for when there's no viable candidate and a more organized "vote left in primaries" group than we've had before.

If you think this sucks beyond hope too, please do enlighten as to what you think would be better. And if you think nothing will work, how 'bout which "won't work" idea has the best chance, in your humble opinion? (I'm sounding and being snarky, but I am genuinely curious; I'm only irritated in that you seem to be pressing a "let's give up" agenda, which, well, enraging, given the stakes; I'm hoping that's not what you're actually advocating)

[loopback.livejournal.com]

I am definitely not pressing the 'let's give up' button, but rather the button that says "the system itself is fundamentally broken."

Some of the things that will create change at this point, given the complicity of the media & both parties in maintaining the political class status quo:

* do nothing, let it all collapse of its own accord. This is currently what is happening, and things will eventually fall. everything does.

* non-violent political action to refuse to obey laws, refuse to pay taxes, etc. the Civil Disobedience tack, of which marches were once a part, but not the sole piece.

* violent political action to precipitate & speed the collapse of the existing government state.

* vacate. leave the nation, let the brain drain also become the social & ethical drain, and let the remains rot from the inside.

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

Ah. Sorry for misinterpreting; my brain is fevered (quite literally, I am shivering w/cold I'm so hot). For which reason I can't respond coherently to anything right now, except mention vast hordes of simultaneous environmental crises and the probable difficulty of overthrowing a hi-tech police state if it gets fully entrenched as counters to the "let it collapse" idea.

the other stuff, tho, mixed w/voting, yay.

I go die now.

[loopback.livejournal.com]

suggested:

get well, do not die.

[lordperrin.livejournal.com]

As I see it, we have 3 options:

1) More of the same
2) Try to use the system to change things, IE: vote 3rd party
3) Violent revolution

As you note above, people tend to be sheep, but I simply have to retain some shred of hope left that eventually the people wont take it anymore. When that breaking point hits, I'd prefer organizing a way to stop the republicrats over bloody revolution.

You complain about co-opted media, and then repeat their brainwashing back verbatim about 'unelectable candidates'. They arent unelectable. The media WANTS you to think that. And I think you know that. So why parrot that line back here?

[kvogel.livejournal.com]

I can't see the US "collapsing" as much as mutating, away from even the pretext of of a constitutional democratic republic, likely into some kind of Orwellian nightmare/corperate thug state.
The damnedist thing about that, is not the mass of people who simply won't care, but those who will entheusiatcially embrace their own enslavement/disenfrancisment.