The Elites and The Rest of Us
“He (Scaramouche) was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.” — Rafael Sabatini
As you know by now, we have been sandbagged by the Obama administration. While the current President talks good he walks the same path as Bush & Cheney. Thanks to identity politics and the residual effects of political correctness, he’s got better p.r. than the two lame white guys. Mais, Quelle difference?
Obama emphasizes Afghanistan, instead of Iraq but thanks to Rolling Stone, we know that the White House team can’t even agree among themselves about what to do with the corrupt Karzai bros. General Petreus, who failed in all but the Iraqi p.r. campaign, is now in Kabul. He’ll keep a tight reign on the reporters while the Taliban run amok. You win these wars, as the Bush team noted, by creating your own reality. Obama won an election by creating an ersatz aura of hope and change.
Ask the First Americans about broken promises.
According to the NYT, the current administration is already prosecuting more “leakers†(whistle blowers) than Bush II did. (See the fascist G-20 security set-up in Toronto!) Enemy combatants and long-term detainees sans habeas corpus remain in Gitmo. The Roberts court leads the charge against the citizenry but the “unitary executive†is happy to follow in the wake of the Supremes.
Thanks to Rolling Stone’s tone and language, we are more convinced than ever of Obama administration support for corrupt bankers, coalmine owners, sloppy-ass oil drillers, and failed militarists. Must rely on the musty old rock’n rollers for insight? Can you say “deja-vu Vietnam†my friends?
A democratic president and congress can’t or won’t even pass legislation to extend benefits for the unemployed. The Democrats blame senatorial procedures or the Republicans, the lobbyists, or the Tea Party nutsos. All Barack needs to do is look in the mirror and see what Bush II looks like. He’s kinder in appearance and his wife and kids are cuter but the aroma of elitism wafts high over the White House.
What we have here, long-time coming, is the culmination of Reaganism—attack and destroy government as check and balance against the great capitalists. The Clintonian globalism project–i.e. world-wide Corporatism—accelerated privatization but at taxpayer expense. They get the profits, we pay off the losses. Bush et al emptied the bank while Obama and company mortgaged the future to pay off more private debts. The elites got the spoils and we got the raspberry.
Now what?
Joe Mike Duran
We must be patient and wait for fate to intervene.
Recent studies show that political power today resides in the hands of independents and swing voters. In Congress, clever Senators manipulate the two factions against each other and take home the goodies. Similarly, here in Taos, clever politicos, Commissioner Joe Mike Duran at the county and Trustee Art Rodarte at the KCEC, use the swing vote to advantage—Joe Mike for dirt and gravel in his district and Art as representative to Tri-State—where he takes home $400 per day plus. If the two party system is bankrupt, politically and morally, then we must become independents so, we too, can begin to leverage political power.
If we are to retrieve the country from the elite economic and political classes at home and abroad, we must also take the long view Elective politics is just another way for greed heads and alleged public servants to exploit class and cultural differences, while grabbing a bigger piece of the economic pie or more political power. But it’s self-defeating in the long term. America Inc. has turned citizens into consumers for benefit of the elite. We scrape by on crumbs. But there’s hope: climate change and enviro holocaust suggest end times has arrived for these ancient anthropoidal leaders.
As Karl Marx pointed out, capitalism is ultimately cannibalistic. Today, the Communist bogeyman is being proven right in his analysis if not his predictions about the romanticized proles. Watch the demise of military-industrial complex in Afghanistan; see the BP disaster in the Gulf; remember the Massey Mine disaster in West Virginia; and observe how the Wall St. Bankers are repeating their bankrupt policy of trading derivatives.
Art Rodarte
Right here at home in Taos, you can see how the microcosmic private-public KCE Coop has built up its debt-asset ratio on the backs of the electric ratepayers. Undemocratic representation and good-old boy politics means there are no checks and balances at the member owned facility. The self-interested swing-vote rules and the Coop loses money in Propane and Internet services, while incurring huge debts for infrastructure expansion. The Coop policies are all based on Ponziism: endless growth–the real estate bubble –now popped. Yet the Coop still wants to consider another $20 million bet and debt on technological pie in the sky i.e. Broadband. We can’t do a damn thing about it because Art Rodarte wants to go hunting at Tri-State for the big bucks. Call it senatorial courtesy.
So, we wait like Godot for chance to change our fate. Laughter is our only friend, apocalyptic possibility our only hope. Buenas suerte, mis amigos.