WEDNESDAY, MAY 29, 2019: NOTE TO FILE
Why Republics Die
And die and die and die and...
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: SERVING THE SYSTEM, FROM THE WIRES, YOU DON'T GET A VOTE
Abstract: Sometimes the seemingly best and brightest, the best informed with the best grasp of Reality 101, drop the ball. To paraphrase Steven Weinberg, 'it takes politics'. The belief that thinking in political terms is sane, the belief in political 'solutions', is a near universal in our politicized-from-birth culture as politics serves the SYSTEM as religion used to, e.g. 12th - 16th century Europe. Time for an ecolate reformation. I have 95 theses (actually 122), but there is no door to nail them to.
COOS BAY (A-P) — The occasion for this note is an opinion piece by Thom Hartmann published in Common Dreams, an online publication since 1997. As I've already had to vet Thom Hartmann as a source of information (and misinformation/disinformation), I checked out Common Dreams. While as everyone on the far Left (or Right) knows, Wikipedia is hopelessly biased, and by universal agreement can be dismissed if information provided differs from one's favorite social media source (or mainstream media with only a few exceptions, e.g. RT, Fox, Democracy NOW!), I read the Wikipedia article on Common Dreams: A clearly in-your-face political offering (moderate to strong Left bias with a Progressive bent). So Thom Hartmann is among the featured. His note is titled, 'This Is How Republics Die: And no, the nation will not just "bounce back" once Trump is gone'. Or read it at: Salon, Daily Kos, Truthdig, AlterNet (with 69 ads), Rawstory, Russia News Now, Brewminate, Nation of Change, The Big Picture Report, Independant Media Institute, LA Progressive. Caveat consumor.
To confess my bias, I wouldn't comment on a far-right rant preaching verities to the converted as I consider ideologues of the Right to be 'not even wrong' and so begging to differ would be a total waste of time and attention. The 'better' educated, often with letters after their names, are often distracted, however, by the mere eloquence of left-leaning wordsmiths. All wordsmiths tell their audience what they want to hear, what they will Like and Share even if they don't use internet-based social media (e.g. taverns). For the better educated left-leaning intelligentsia types, they tend to prefer the better educated pundits, so they Like Chris Hedges or Thom Hartmann types (vs Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity). I'm probably deluding myself to think that begging to differ with the likes of Chris Hedges, Thom Hartmann, Lee Camp, Noam Chomsky or Steven Pinker, obviously far smarter and better informed than I am, is not completely and totally a waste of time and attention.
The following quotes were selected by a Hartmann supporter/admirer, not by biased me who could select for the more facepalming claims (e.g. From the top, in the third sentence, 'Rome was a nation for nearly 2,000 years [1,229]...a republic...around 300 years [482]...'), so I won't, and will go with his most cogent offerings:
...A republic falters because it ceases to be functional and democratic—meeting the needs of the people and being governed by the people—when behind-the-scenes plutocrats, warlords, or corporations achieve near total—and nearly invisible—political/financial dominance over the visible political process.
The forces driving the death of our republic include Trump trying to prosecute those who investigated him for his campaign’s Russia ties and his disavowal of the rights and powers of the first branch of American government, the Congress. Fueling the process for nearly two generations are the right-wing billionaires funding politicians who tolerate the promotion of deadly white supremacist violence, all in the pursuit of lower taxes, higher profits, and a dog-eat-dog political ideology that doesn’t let average people get their needs met through the political process.
The modern Republican Party has, since the Reagan era, stood exclusively for making the very rich much richer, privatizing Social Security, ending Medicare and Medicaid, gutting food stamps and other programs to help those in poverty and the working poor, increasing levels of poison and pollution in our air and water, and turning our entire school system over to for-profit vultures. These are all pretty unpopular positions, so to get elected the GOP has pulled together a coalition of white supremacists, gun fanatics, and religious zealots who want total control over women and their bodies.
As we post-post-modernists are inclined to do, let me deconstruct these verities for you: From a far Right POV there has never been a republic where those who run the show were truly free to run it right and well, so no surprise that Hartmann longs for the good-old-days when America wasn't run by plutocrats, warloads, or corporations behind-the-scenes (when it was openly run by them even though they were not truly free).
A functioning republic of, by, and for the People never existed, so Trump is just more business-as-usual than usual. But times they are a-changin' as there are now more left-wing billionaires (thanks to silicon) than ever. I've seen them at Burning Man. Bill Gates considers the ecomodernist leaning Seven Pinker's 'Enlightenment Now' to be, 'My new favorite book of all time'. When most people realize Thom has all the answers, they will vote his way and the world will be saved. [Or not.] When the political process meets the needs of the average people, then per capita consumption will increase (the rich are limited in how much they can eat—all they want like 99% of other Americans, but the poor to average could buy bigger cars and drive them more if they had more money). This will growth the economy faster, so vote for Sanders.
The modern Democratic Party arose with the election of Andrew Jackson and has rhetorically stood exclusively for: making the poor richer; commonizing the costs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; provding food stamps and other programs to help those in poverty and the working poor to better serve the SYSTEM; increasing levels of poison and pollution control to keep our air and water consumable so we can prosperously grow the economy, and turning our entire specialist-manufacturing school system over to SYSTEM-serving educators who are doing especially well in the higher left-leaning halls of academia, for no other reason than these were all pretty popular positions that got Democrats elected.
The GOP has their pretty popular positions too that won't be mentioned, like some apparel, so to get elected the Left has pulled together a coalition of anti-racists, gun-control fanatics, and Islam loving freedom of religion zealots who want total control over the SYSTEM to grow the economy their way, for the benefit of all (who will serve them), to make America great again (Thomas Jefferson and FDR we love you!).
Oh, and why do complex societies collapse? Well, read Joseph Tainer and others who would rather know than believe (which excludes Hartmann, Limbaugh, Camp, Pinker...). And then there is the history thing, stuff about the past lives of humans, to consider.
Image above, first used: Politics as Usual
"Seek out the condition now that will come anyway." —Howard T. Odumref
"The higher and faster you grow, the further and faster you fall, when you're building up capital stock in a nonrenewable resource. In the face of exponential growth of extraction or use, a doubling or quadrupling of the nonrenewable resource give little added time to develop alternatives.... The real choice in the management of a nonrenewable resource is whether to get rich very fast or to get less rich but stay that way longer." —Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer [Choice? The current SYSTEM always selects for short-termism, a remorseless dynamic we are all trapped in.]
"We are trapped in the perverse dynamics of a civilization that if it does not grow does not work, and while growing, destroys the natural bases that make it possible. It is necessary, then, to escape this dynamic before it is too late." —Moving Away From the Pro-Growth Economy: An annotated bibliography, April 2017, Prepared by Erika Gavenus with the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere.
• Our global socio-politico-economic system is NOT REMOTELY CLOSE TO SUSTAINABLE.
• We are captured and being dragged along by a complex, powerful and remorseless dynamic that automatically thwarts all attempts to stop it.
• If we don’t put time and energy into understanding it, we are doomed to go with it, right to the final curtain. —Garvin Boyle(ref)Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities. —Mark Twain
I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s.” —Mark Twain
