The following piece is excellent, but I am often reminded of Stanley Fish's quip that you'll agree with me if you already agree with me. But interesting stuff below and good fodder for debate. How does America return to America?
"The probability, then, is that the next election will be close. It could also be fateful. Not because it is apt to enable the kind of electoral transformation the country urgently needs. But the Republican Party already has a majority on the Supreme Court, which increasingly attacks the rights of workers and consumers. If it captures the White House and both houses of Congress it will pass Draconian measures and deploy repressive tactics to stifle public dissent. All in the name of freedom. What to do?"
"To me, the first thing to do is to explain in sympathetic ways what kind of pressures the white working class faces today, without caving in to tendencies within a segment of this class to demonize minorities.
The second is to remind people forcefully how many times tax cuts for the rich and market deregulation have generated economic crises, starting with the Great Depression.
The third, and most fundamental, is to challenge head on Republican definitions of freedom through anti-labor and anti-consumer policies of the state joined to a vision of market self-sufficiency, elaborating a richer story of how freedom works and how deregulated markets demean it.
The fourth, which can only work if the third is under way, is to propose an ambitious jobs program that, if passed, would simultaneously rebuild the infrastructure to meet the needs of the twenty-first century, provide meaningful jobs for high school graduates, stimulate the economy, and promote real freedom for families, workers and consumers.
The fifth is to insist, against the grain of the Republican story, that tax increases for the rich and a regulated economy are desperately needed to avoid a new version of the most recent meltdown.
To me, the third element provides the lynch pin." William E. Connolly
http://contemporarycondition.blogspot.com/2011/06/republican-pincer-machine.html
And see this. http://www.truth-out.org/ideological-crisis-western-capitalism/1310127895
"The rancorous debate over the debt belies a fundamental truth of our economy -- that it is run for the few at the expense of the many, that our entire government has been turned into a machine which takes the wealth of a mass of Americans and accelerates it into the hands of the few. Let me give you some examples." http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/15
"If you think your local Andy Griffith is a greedy pig because he retired in his forties and built an addition to his garage with your tax money, try hanging out with a guy who eats $400 crabs, throws himself $5 million parties where he is serenaded by Rod Stewart and Patti Labelle (who sang "Happy Birthday"), and then compares the president to Hitler when word leaks out that he might have to pay taxes at the same rate as a firefighter or a kindergarten teacher." http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/14-15
And yet conservatives love welfare, it is just a different sort of welfare. http://www.conservativenannystate.org/
"The probability, then, is that the next election will be close. It could also be fateful. Not because it is apt to enable the kind of electoral transformation the country urgently needs. But the Republican Party already has a majority on the Supreme Court, which increasingly attacks the rights of workers and consumers. If it captures the White House and both houses of Congress it will pass Draconian measures and deploy repressive tactics to stifle public dissent. All in the name of freedom. What to do?"
"To me, the first thing to do is to explain in sympathetic ways what kind of pressures the white working class faces today, without caving in to tendencies within a segment of this class to demonize minorities.
The second is to remind people forcefully how many times tax cuts for the rich and market deregulation have generated economic crises, starting with the Great Depression.
The third, and most fundamental, is to challenge head on Republican definitions of freedom through anti-labor and anti-consumer policies of the state joined to a vision of market self-sufficiency, elaborating a richer story of how freedom works and how deregulated markets demean it.
The fourth, which can only work if the third is under way, is to propose an ambitious jobs program that, if passed, would simultaneously rebuild the infrastructure to meet the needs of the twenty-first century, provide meaningful jobs for high school graduates, stimulate the economy, and promote real freedom for families, workers and consumers.
The fifth is to insist, against the grain of the Republican story, that tax increases for the rich and a regulated economy are desperately needed to avoid a new version of the most recent meltdown.
To me, the third element provides the lynch pin." William E. Connolly
http://contemporarycondition.blogspot.com/2011/06/republican-pincer-machine.html
And see this. http://www.truth-out.org/ideological-crisis-western-capitalism/1310127895
"The rancorous debate over the debt belies a fundamental truth of our economy -- that it is run for the few at the expense of the many, that our entire government has been turned into a machine which takes the wealth of a mass of Americans and accelerates it into the hands of the few. Let me give you some examples." http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/15
"If you think your local Andy Griffith is a greedy pig because he retired in his forties and built an addition to his garage with your tax money, try hanging out with a guy who eats $400 crabs, throws himself $5 million parties where he is serenaded by Rod Stewart and Patti Labelle (who sang "Happy Birthday"), and then compares the president to Hitler when word leaks out that he might have to pay taxes at the same rate as a firefighter or a kindergarten teacher." http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/14-15
And yet conservatives love welfare, it is just a different sort of welfare. http://www.conservativenannystate.org/
