Thursday, October 31, 2013

Fundraiser Day Five: Charles Pierce Wonders What Comes Next


Mr. Pierce pronounced Last Rites over the silly, fleeting notion of "Obamaism" and wonders what will take its place:
The End Of Obamaism

By Charles P. Pierce

...
Then, of course, there was Glitch-ghazi-gate, the troubled rollout of the Affordable Care Act's website that occasioned yet another round of mock concern from the Republicans in Congress -- now desperate to change the subject from how they almost blew up the economy -- and from the courtier press -- now desperate to get away from a story in which there was no spurious "balance" to hide behind. NBC, in particular, seemed positively frantic to prove its non-liberalism to the world.

What this very strange period ultimately proves is that Barack Obama, for all his talk about how "Washington" doesn't work, and all his endless praise for the essential goodness of the American people, has to know by now that we are in fact a very political people, easily manipulated, and carefully divided against each other, over and over again, and by people who know how. I never bought the 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention ("We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America!"), never bought a word of it. Now we are seeing it in its fundamental eclipse. Whatever Obamaism really is, it has run its course. The fight now is over what comes next.

Well, since Cholly asked, I'd say that as far as our national political dialogue is concerned, "Liberals" will remain in a state of enforced invisibility, existing only as bogeymen who are either entirely (Fox News/Hate Radio) or 50% (MSNBC/NYT/PBS/NPR/Ad Nauseum) to blame for everything. America's Emmanuel Goldstein: the all-purpose scapegoat for all bad things.

The Liberal critique of the Wingnuts, on the other hand, will continue be expropriated, chopped, stripped, repainted and re-marketed by the hydra-headed David Frum/Ramesh Ponnuru/Andrew Sullivan/Rich Lowry/Michael Steele/Joe Scarborough beast as "Real Conservatism".  They will continue to have many amusing, dick-waving arguments among themselves about who was right about the Crazies first.  None of them will ever mention the word "Liberal" except to sneer.  They will all continue to be gainfully employed.

Everyone associated with the "No Labels" scam will continue to get paid.

David Brooks will return from "book leave" tanned and rested with new insights into why Both Sides are to Blame.

The Poors will continue getting poorer.  The rich will continue getting richer and paying premium prices to keep the Poors the hell away from them.  Liberals will continue to yell impotently outside the castle gates.

Eventually enough old, white, Republican bigots will shuffle off to unquiet graves to change the political reward structure just enough so that we might be able to begin to address actual problems, which by that time will have grown so acute that they will be Huge Horrible Megadeath Crises, which the remainder of the Real Conservative Caucus will go right back to telling us can only be fixed by unleashing the power of the Free Market (Translation: even less regulation, even lower taxes.)

People will wonder Very Loudly what the fuck was wrong with us back at the dawn of the 21st that we refused to rouse ourselves to fix our very real, very immediate, clearly dire problems.

Which is when we will either get genuinely serious about our Huge Horrible Megadeath Crises...or the roundup, deportation and imprisonment of the Liberals (which history as it will be written by David Brooks will prove to have been the sinister force behind every Huge Horrible Megadeath Crises) will begin in earnest. 





11 comments:

Anonymous said...

You know, there is a thing as rich poor hating liberals? Provided those poors are dumb hicks from flyover. Why, here in DC and NOVA that's the only sort of liberal there is!

JerryB said...

Maybe I'm just a little more cynical today than usual but I'm ready for the great roundup. I don't honestly expect things to get better in my life time and I don't have the resources to protect myself from the horror show that is the coming zombie apocalypse.

Maybe tomorrow I'll feel better.

Horace Boothroyd III said...

Easily Manipulated is right: some goober leaks documents exposing the non-coverup of the non-commission of a non-crime, and the hysterical ninnies of the faux radical left (I'm looking at you, dailykos.com) starts a witch hunt against imagined paid NSA disruptor trolls.

Thus nullifying anything that a united Left might possibly have done to oppose the scheming of the Right.

Read some economics, doofuses, Opportunity Cost is a thing.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

You know, there is a thing as rich poor hating liberals? Provided those poors are dumb hicks from flyover. Why, here in DC and NOVA that's the only sort of liberal there is!

I have no doubt there are some of those "rich, poor-hating liberals" punctuation added to make sense of the phrase). Somewhere. I guess. I'd like to see an example sometime, but whatever.

But I also have no doubt that there are other kinds of liberals, even in the Center Of The Universe that is DC/NOVA. I know some, matter of fact.

And I can even see that from the dreaded backwater of flyover country.

Say, have you ever heard of a book called "How To Win Friends And Influence People"?

Anonymous said...

@JerryB

I expect liberals to win on all social issues, mainly by making deals with the rich in the cosmopolitan centers who share our values and lean left as well.

I also expect that since communism is gone and there is no remaining reason at all for the upper classes to push any sort of common good for that to go away completely. Once renewable energy is here corporations and the well off will have their own power and get out of paying for the community power grid. That will be the point, where along with 3d printing, robotics, that they completely pull out of any sort of community arrangement.

We will have a two tier society that can't be broken. It will all be based around wealth. 3d printing, better robotics (including for security), the internet, and renewable energy to get off the grid will be the key pieces to bring this about and permanently cement it.

We'll see the privatization of water rights full scale once people can get off the grid. There are already meetings for this sort of thing that are being pushed by finance, the tech sector, and big industry.

Anonymous said...

@Zombie

They are also in New York and LA, if that helps.

I just object to the notion that it's only conservatives and centrists that are plutocrats. From my experience, and the liberals I encounter, liberalism is just identity politics based off sneering down your nose at dumb hicks and making sure the bible brigade has absolutely no control over what you do in your spare time.

Economic populism, shit populism is as dirty of a term to them as racism or sexism.

This is also why I think the idea that a purely Democratic congress would deliver for the poor is idiotic. Hell I trust the Democrats to cut social security more than I do the Republicans. Elite Democrats want it, and they don't have to deal with old people voting for them.

OBS said...

I just object to the notion that it's only conservatives and centrists that are plutocrats. From my experience, and the liberals I encounter, liberalism is just identity politics based off sneering down your nose at dumb hicks and making sure the bible brigade has absolutely no control over what you do in your spare time.

Economic populism, shit populism is as dirty of a term to them as racism or sexism.


I like the part where you provide all sorts of examples of these people and their ideas.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

I just object to the notion that it's only conservatives and centrists that are plutocrats.

Nothing wrong with that.

From my experience, and the liberals I encounter, liberalism is just identity politics based off sneering down your nose at dumb hicks and making sure the bible brigade has absolutely no control over what you do in your spare time.

Extrapolating from your narrow experiences to generalize is what's known as stereotyping. Perhaps the people you are encountering are not so much 'liberals' as they are 'assholes'. I suggest widening your acquaintance pool. Perhaps visit those vast desolate spaces between New York and LA? There are actual people there, I assure you.

aka The cheese eater said...

Science Fiction University
Q: Who set up the Night Watch in Babylon 5?
A: President Barack "both sides don't" Obama
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10904

aka The cheese eater said...

Science Fiction University
Q: Who set up the Night Watch in Babylon 5?
A: President Barack "both sides don't" Obama
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10904

Cinesias said...

Geese:

That time may come, and it will be people like me that will undo it.

Black hoods and guillotines are just as useful in 2013 as they were in 1793.

Maybe even more so.

I welcome the day.