Response re: the future to Brandenveld, #26640 - 10/02/06 Lots of “nice people” in America over the
last 60 years, many of them quite well educated,
and most of them politically inert, have played their genteel role, along with the political scoundrels to produce our current despicable state of affairs. So, what next?

My hunch is there will soon be a collapse of the American “Gold Rush” style of capitalism here and our America will be reduced to an obsolete “Black Hole” with little or no influence. Given the obscene levels of Repub/Demican corruption here, this will be a fitting outcome, good for us all.

Europe, with its 350 million people, and possible 600 million by 2130, and a sensible economic union, freed from 100 years in two-gun wild west America’s shadow, will be the dynamic force of Western civilization.

The entire Muslim world, by contrast, is doomed to face revolution, civil war and fragmentation over the next 100 years.

China, with 5000 years of civilzing evolution behind it, after 60 years of remarkable renewal since 1945 will probably exert the greatest influence on the course of human history with Europe and India as balancing developmental powers.

Sound analysis of the likelihood of capitalist collapse can be found in the last two issues of Monthly Review - July/August & September, 2006, a sound, honest Marxist periodical that has been around since 1949. Hobsbawm’s 4 volumes on the rise and growth of capitalism, ending with “The Age of Extremes” 1914-1991 and Braudel’s fine works are also helpful guides to most likely outcomes in coming years.

To me, the inevitable impulse here for our politico parasites to loot the country for their own gain, and selfish enrichment of the 1% of our people who own 60% of all American wealth, is a revolutionary condition. Since the Fascists with their murderous FBI + CIA, and fake Homeland Security parasites have all the guns and bullets, it will have to be a moral revolution. For this, the American people are lacking in character, hence are devoid of vision or conviction.

Ion C. Laskaris,Burlington,Vt. + iclrevusa.com

@Comment #26590 by ionclaskaris: Since writing on 9/24 my view of what’s happening with America has turned darker. So I agree with you, ionclaskaris,that the opposition Democrats/Republicans is more apparent than real and that, sadly, there is nothing left to choose. Only a revolt, or the implosion of the system, will end the current disaster. Or, perhaps later in the century, China will (and don’t ask me what that will mean).The USA is rapidly turning into the Fourth Reich. A later generation will ask us “Daddy, Mummy, why did you do business with America, why did you lecture there, why didn’t you boycott that terrible regime?” The American people, among which are millions of decent individuals, is one giant human shield, protecting a bunch of crooks.

A Contrarian view. Blaustein is just about dead wrong with his pompous, excathedra pronouncements I think.

I. There is no “stark choice” because both major parties are tape-worms snug in the bowels of corporate capitalism. Like the 1852-1860 clashes
heading for civil war over slavery and states rights issues, both the Demmie Castrati and the
Fascist/Republican rule as “the Axis of Evil” in our nation and the world must be destroyed.

2. This will never happen! So the consequences of this American election, like all of them starting with the clown, Eisenhower, in 1952, have been more or less an American citizenry on a treadmill to oblivion.

3. The most telling election in my 60 years seeing
our pathetic political scene was 1972 when Crook Nixon took 49 out of 50 states against a far more intelligent, educated and morally committed man,
George McGovern. 12 months later, the impeach- ment process was rolling, and, by August, 1974, the Nix had to run away. The point? Our American electorate loves to vote for degenerate politico trash every time it has a fair chance to do so.

This has happened in popular votes in many nations over the years. Ours, headed by leaders with their despicable patriotic posturing and reactionary Christian fundamentalist poses, is due for moral collapse because a spoiled, lazy, ignorant, cowardly citizenry with a racist storm-trooper mentality lacks any sense of decency or character. Some readers may themselves be too timid to face this reality but awareness of almost constant despicable politico conduct against the public interest has been noted by Thoreau, Henry Adams, Mark Twain, Jack London, Eugene Debs and thousands of others to this very day. To you I say do your historical homework.

The blunt fact is that this first American Republic is dead. Witness just this week, the Republican congressional scum, with plenty of
grovelling Demmie help enabled this illegal President of ours to torture anyone at will in the future,at any time. And most Americans love this proposition which makes them feel so secure, like adult-size babies in a perpetual day nursery

Never again will the American people make significant choices, because they have failed to do just that for over half a century. So spare us the drivel.

Ion C. Laskaris,Burlington,Vt.+ iclrevusa.com

Why are Dutch , Canadian, and ( my fellow countrymen) British dying in Afghanistan - we must do our voting duty also , and reject Blair et al .

With the upcoming election, the tension is mounting.  There is a LOT at stake as perceived by everyone who cares at all.  I have no use for glib labels like liberal and conservative, left and right, Democrat (tax-and-spend) and Republican (profits before people), etc.  It was a very great Master who reportedly said, “By their fruits ye shall know them.”  Since it is a choice, realistically, only between Democrats and Republicans, consider at least which fruits are the lesser of two evils.  I’m not a Democrat, but, for the most part, I would like the Democrats to beat the hell out of the Republican candidates.  Over many years and in the most general terms, it seems to me that the Republicans have been the superior, more clever, debaters — whereas the Democrats have been somewhat mealy-mouthed and self-pitying, and at times rather spineless and uncooperative with one another.  A very general impression only!  I’m mentioning this because I would implore Democratic candidates to make it a strong, heartfelt fight of it — calling a spade a spade, a fact a fact, in no uncertain terms.  We need focus and unbridled intention.  You’ll have my vote — but this is no time for wobbling.  And, please, may we all remember when passions run high: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

If you think there is going to be an election in 2008 if the republicans lose in november your in for a Big surprise.
Executive Orders and National Security Memos from earlier years (Regan & Bush senior) over 500 all together supercede any constitutional laws. See U.S Registry, http://www.educat-yourself.org
All we need is an National Emergency i.e. (another 911, bird flu, WMD, etc.)and the president can cancel the elections and declare martial law.
Welcome to the North American Union- Canada, Mexico and U.S. as one Government (NWO)

I think the chaos of Bushian claw-and-fang politics is perhaps a function of a similarly ruthless economic model of the world, the boundaryless, nationless world painted by Friedman (“The World is Flat”) in which no boundaries, no codes of conduct need obtain and he who hits the trough hardest gets the most slops.  It is a barbarian model in spite of the techie gloss used to paint it.  Much like the current administration.

(If they were riding Mongolian ponies and wearing dead animals on their heads, we would recognize them immediately!)

A

I am a classic liberal who believes in less government and other interference in our lives. I used to vote Democrat until creeping socialism and left wing enthusiasm posed a threat of the excesses of socialism out of control like USSR. I began to vote Republican to quell the march toward socialism and the welfare state where no wealth could be generated and what wealth remained could be fed to the starving who would not work as long as the trough was full of slop.

Now we have drifted the other way and the threat of fascism rears its ugly head. If you got passing grades in World History 101 and 102, you will see the comparison to the German experience in the thirties. Also compare the Russian experience in the early 20th century when socialism gone wild did that nation in, with the American drift to a welfare state, lest you allow us to drift too far left. A socialist ‘George Bush’ would be almost as dangerous as a fascist George Bush.

The middle is much safer than the right or left. We control the destiny of America. The middle is the home of the cool heads with our control of the safety valve. We have to know when to push the button for change. We acted during the Korean War, when we elected Eisenhower to protect us from the accumulated Democrat errors. We acted during the Viet Nam War when we elected Nixon to protect us from the Johnson syndrome. And we acted again after the Nixon debacle when we elected Carter to protect us from the Republican reaction to the Nixon mentality.

Unfortunately the best do not always stay in power and the worst come to power as an emergency reaction to a lurch toward the opposite extreme. Clinton was to rescue us from a perceived fascist drift with Bush I. Reagan was to rescue us from a socialist drift. The control valve is getting harder to operate with a sensitivity too delicate for the clumsy middle majority to manage.

But, manage it we must. If we fail this time by putting a greater threat into power than the one we are retiring, we will risk a full scale stampede to the left and have to do it all over again to get the fanatics of the left out of power.

On the other hand, I am glad that we do not have a large strong middle of the road party with its own raison d’etre. We need social experimentation to the left and to the right to be able to see the direction of any drift. Most voters cannot see it in the light of history, but tend to see it in terms of individual benefits and threats. And that is how it should be. The swing voter is the real control and safety valve of democracy in America.

Now is the time to swing leftish quite a way to bring George Bush and Company to justice—not just get him out of power. Let us abort the Bush plan as a free choice and let baby Fascism die in the womb.

Never fear. The GOP will win. They have had many years to fiddle and gerrymander the election system. They have been succesful beyond even their dreams.

Remember the slogan

“Diebold to the rescue”!

LET them win????  What are you, nuts?  That’s the dumbest idea since Reagan’s “Dense Pack”!

Here’s what will happen if the GOP keeps control of both houses: Legislation to rob you and me of our rights will continue and be expanded.  Anyone loudly objecting to Mad King George’s policies will go on a list.  The IRS will investigate them (like they are doing to that liberal church here on Truthdig).

They are currently laying the foundation to:
a) Remove all accountability for the Administration’s actions, not matter how brutal, inhuman, corrupt or illegal.
b) Turn our right to vote into a joke (if they haven’t completed the job already—Stalin said it doesn’t matter who gets the most votes, just who counts the votes.)
c) Continue Delay’s “K Street Plan” to starve ALL contributions by lobbyists to the Democrats
d) Continue to gerrymander congressional districts to achieve their goal of a “permanent majority”.  Did you know that more Americans by FAR voted for Democrats in both the House and Senate, but still, due to deliberate disparities, with a minority of votes, the GOP has a majority in both houses?
e) Abandonment of habeous corpus will reach into more and more Americans’ lives.  It won’t be one-percenters, like Jose Padillo, but will start to hit the louder farther left voices.
f) Application to the courts for reversal is ALREADY in severe danger—and with Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito on the court, just one more vacancy from the sane side and there will be NO excess by Mad King George that they won’t rubberstamp.
g) The destruction of ALL social programs that are a foundation of modern industrial societies will continue to create a greater and great disparity between rich and poor.  The destruction of the middle class is WELL under way. Most people only maintain the status quo with both adults working.
h) The desired inexorable march to a new form of slavery: Feudal Capitalism, similar to the 19th century will emerge, with all the safety and safety net programs gone.  Labor unions will be outlawed though they will be more necessary than they have been in over 100 years.
i) Very soon, possibly by next month (Gary Hart’s prediction), Mad King George will start ANOTHER insane war, this time with Iran and possibly Syria.  After they win in November, look for a re-establishment of the draft, but set up so that loyal Republicans and the well-to-do won’t have to serve, but Democrats and middle to working class will be fighting in Iran.
j) The scariest projection: Due to the new “Critical” war, Mad King George will have the excuse he needs to “postpone” (that really means cancel) the 2008 presidential elections, finally establishing himself as President For Life. Alternatively, under the “Unitary Presidency” evil, he’ll be able to violate the Constitution and run for a 3rd term, which, with Diebold’s help, he’ll win with a 70-90% “majority”—just like Robert Mugabe. They have been working at setting ALL the machinery in place for years now—and all it awaits is Rove’s promised “October Surprise” to keep both houses.

No, we MUST take back one house, at least.

It is now midmorning and I see that at 3AM I am unable to spell…...I really did mean frightening…..and that describes how other countries, at least here in Central America, see what is taking place in the US.

Re Comment #25564 by MARIAM RUSSELL:

Mariam, you’re right: just because you don’t live in “the last, best hope of earth” (poor, naive Abe Lincoln’s description of the U.S.) doesn’t mean you’re safe from “our” depradations. Empires by their very nature want to extend their boundaries far and wide, and this one (long ago abetted by multinational corporations) has a reach that is truly global. By comparison, previous empires from Rome to England were rank amateurs.

The only small, grim ray of light is that as empires overreach, they inevitably drain their financial resources and produce chaos abroad and anarchy at home. But getting caught in the middle of that process doesn’t make it any easier.

Well, courage. Live and love as well as you can in these dark times.

@Comment #25564 by MARIAM RUSSELL:

Mariam, I understand your fear, but being terrified is exactly what these warmongers feed on. I live in Holland, and ‘my’ government has decided to sacrifice the lives of young men for the so-called ‘rebuilding’ of Afghanistan. They’ll die for George W. Bush and his criminal clique. Mariam, don’t do these reptiles the pleasure of being afraid. Even if the worst comes to the worst, look at evil with a fearless and human(e) eye.

Gijsbert

Paul, I am terrified and I do not live in the US.
You cannot get away from the results of what is done by the US gov by moving to another country. WHAT IS SO FREIGHTENING ABOUT THIS BUNCH IS THAT THEY HAVE ARROGANTLY MADE IT CLEAR TO THE REST OF THE WORLD WHAT THE AIM OF THE US IS…..WORLD DOMINATION…..IF YOU ARE NOT IN LOCK STEP WITH US YOU ARE AGAINST US AND IN DEEP DODO. OTHER GOVS WERE NOT SO HONEST SO MAYBE THIS IS A GOOD THING…...THAT DOES NOT MAKE IT ANY LESS FREIGHTENING.

The NY Times had a piece some weeks ago suggesting that it might actually be better for the GOP to retain control for another two years.

Why?

Because then the GOP cannot blame us Dems for all the gross negligence of the last six years.  At that point, any American who still votes GOP can rightly be categorized as the sort who would have put Jews into gas chambers during the 1940s.  The evidence will have been there for anyone who cared to look:  this is what GWB and the GOP are all about.

So.  Should the Dems win this time?  One can only hope.  But things being as they are:  No.  Let the GOP take the FULL blame for all that they have wrought.  They WILL try to blame all their failures on us—they always do; none of them are really “man” enough to shoulder their own faults—so in a really perverse way, I rather hope the GOP retains control of the government until we, the people—the DEMOCRATIC people—can truly take charge in ‘08.

Re Comment #25469 by MARIAM RUSSELL:

If you still have any capacity for optimism left, you might want to read “Wait!: Don’t Move to Canada: A Stay-and-Fight Strategy to Win Back America” by Bill Scher (correct name & spelling—-no relation to our Bob). Problem is, I’m not exactly in an optimistic mood. Please, prove me wrong this November.

I threatened to move to Canada during both the Nixon and Reagan administrations, but of course I stuck it out here. But Bush makes Dick and Ronnie look like altar boys, so even though my Canadian friends tell me that their country isn’t what it used to be thanks to rightie Stephen Harper, it’s gotta be better than this. Or Mexico? Or Europe?. . .

But what if you just don’t want to move, because of fiancial constraints, family committments, or age. (I’m in my 50’s and it’s a little late to start over.) But then it’s never easy to uproot yourself, whatever your age.

I found this interesting comment from a blogger on another site: “. . .it’s no accident that Ben Franklin said that he would expect our government to last ‘a few years before becoming a despotism.’  When a woman asked him what kind of government the framers had created, he replied ‘a republic madam, if you can keep it.’ Well, we have not kept it well, and now we are losing it.”

That sounds about right.

Not only the most important election in a generation but probably the most important ever. That’s because the war-mongers win and STAT, the naval strike force that’s already being assembled will take off for Iran, and, if we get into a war there, look for Patriot Act 3, 4 and 5 to be shoved down our throats and, if this happens, presto, there went freedom and democracy in America.

And then farewell to our resistance to Bush’s perpetual war to incite terror, and goodby our trying to stop global warming

Which is a doomsday scenario. Which is why November’s election is the most important ever.

Paul, you are right and I am terrified, so what now…..

Expecting the Bushies to play fair come election time is like asking Mike Tyson to fight by the Marquis of Queensbury rules. These guys are hard-wired to take out their political enemies on sight. Although most of them are chickenhawks who’ve never seen actual combat, they’ve compensated for their balllessness by using faux-macho techniques modelled on the old Marine maxim: “Kill ‘em all, let God sort ‘em out.” They proved that in 2000 and 2004. What makes you think 2006 (or 2008) will be any different?

For a functioning democracy to work, you have to have an actual democracy. We don’t, or at least we don’t any longer. Perhaps we never did, but in the past, we at least had mechanisms in place that gave the electorate a serviceable illusion of free choice.

The crazed genius of the Bush administration is that it has abandoned any pretense to maintaining this illusion. Like the true mafiosi they are, Bush, Cheney, and the other neocon psychopaths in this adminsitration do not even try to conceal their criminal agendas.

Rather, they boldly and unasahmedly use whatever lies, dirty tricks, and outright force are necessary to preserve their stranglehold on power. And it works: in a true democracy, the majority of citizens would have long ago taken to the streets (not simply the voting booths) to oust these bastards.

Apart from blaming (rightly)gerrymandering and Diebold tweaking for part of this, how much longer are you going to let the dim bulbs who repeatedly vote for these fuckers off the hook because they suffer from “false consciousness” or some other Marxist all-purpose excuse for wilfull stupidity? “Ignorance is not innocence but sin,” as Robert Browing said. Amen, Bob.

If the Republicans do retain control of both houses, then Rousseau’s prediction will finally have come true: “Some day the slaves will rush to put on their chains.”

People we have to hold our noses and vote Dimocrat unless you live in a state where it doesn’t matter.  After we get rid of Bush we have to change the electoral landscape. The Republicans Gerrymandered most districts to their benefit so it is going to be near impossible to win. 

If the Dimocrats refuse to make any changes than we have to get training and guns or seriously think about leaving.

Hopefully, in this 2006 election we can vote out as many Republicans and vote in as many Democrats and third party candidates as we possibly can.  Maybe then our country can begin to return to sanity.

Yep, it is probably naive to think we can vote these jokers out, what with Diebold pulling their little tricks, and all the other tricks we have put up with out of secs of state and other officials who have a hand in the election process. BUT DO IT ANYWAY…..VOTE DEM….IT IS NO TIME FOR EXPERIMENTS OR STAYING HOME OR VOTING ALL OVER THE PLACE….VOTE DEM….THEN AFTER WE HAVE SOME HOPE OF BEING ABLE TO CHANGE A FEW THINGS WE CAN START CLEANING HOUSE AND GET RID OF THE WAR AND TORTURE LOVERS. THEN WE MAY EVEN BE ABLE TO GET SOME OF OUR RIGHTS BACK.

It is naive of us to think we can vote these usurpers out. They already are subject to prosecution. What they already have been brave enough to do will not stop now with some silly election. Get ready. Big doins are afoot.

I hope there is a general awakening. There will be quite alot of repair to be done. I can’t understand why certain Republicans haven’t rebelled. They might with a Democratic majority.

Mr Blaustein is right - these elections are of paramount importance, but not only to the American people, but to the whole of mankind. The Bush administration, in its murderously blind and reckless drive for world domination, may very well end civilization as we know it. Let’s hope there is some sense left among a majority of the American people. And hopefully it will not be swayed by the war against Iran that has been set into motion to coincide (?) with the elections…