As Donald tRUMP, on the eve of his second maladministration, stood on the podium flanked by a line of billionaires it had become clear who had 'won' the election. No longer feeling compelled to hide behind the curtains the money mongers stood like a phalanx behind their puppet in an open display of contempt and power. They had bought the election; they now own the republic.
What follows is an essay I posted in these columns in January of 2008. What I feared; what I predicted, has come to pass:
“In
his acceptance speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in
Boston, Senator John Kerry pointed out that the middle class
controlled a smaller share of the national economy than at any time
since before 1929. He could have run on that issue alone in 2004 and
won the presidency but decided instead to re-fight the Vietnam War.
With median household purchasing power declining by $1,500. Annually
the situation has not improved.
What
has improved, since the last election cycle, is that all of the
Democrats and Mike Huckabee have discovered it. Even Mitt Romney, as
he visits at last the gutted remains of the Michigan he once knew,
has discovered the fearful plight of the old working class as he
tries to inject some air into his gasping campaign. This is important
not as a partisan issue, nor is it important solely as a class issue,
it is an important political issue that speaks to the condition of
the very soul of the Republic.
What
distinguishes us from the classic banana republic is that advanced
democratic societies have a large, vibrant and controlling middle
class. This is no accident. Emerging under the crushing oppression of
the old feudal order, modern democratic systems arose to challenge
the feudal aristocracies not only for political power but to use that
power to improve their own condition. The result was both peaceful
and violent. Relatively peaceful in England with the Reform acts of
1832, extending the franchise, and violent in America and France with
their respective revolutions. The result was, broadly speaking, the
same. Political parties made up of the new urban and industrial
professionals, labor unions, and Farm groups replaced the old
aristocracies and in varying degrees went about the business of
constructing—through a sometimes painful century long process—a
vibrant and controlling middle class. In America the process had a
head start with some 80% of the electorate originally middling
‘yeoman’ farmers who quickly organized behind the aristocratic
Jefferson to oppose the monied ‘eastern interests’ represented by
Hamilton and the Federalists. To varying degrees American politics, a
balance between conflict and consensus, has since been a contest
between these two factions with the modern middle class taking it’s
form with the New Deal and the monied interests having long since
taken refuge in the Republican Party. Democracy then creates the
middle class because politics are driven by numbers, Jeremy Bentham’s
dictate that the purpose of any society is to provide the most
benefit for the most people. Majorities have used their political
strength to oppose concentrations of economic power, break up
monopolies, regulate economies, redistribute wealth and construct
safety nets for the elderly, impoverished and infirm. The middle
class had become so controlling that both parties have had to pay
homage to it for the privilege of exercising national power. So the
Republicans pushed the expansion of the franchise, busted the trusts,
began the environmental movement under Teddy Roosevelt, the Democrats
under Wilson advanced on that theme then under FDR began the
wholesale restructuring of the middle class after the debacle of the
1920’s. Not only has the democracy created a commanding middle
class but the middle class has a vested interest in defending
democracy. This was a point entirely missed by Her Hitler.
It
is important for the Middle class to be strong enough to counter the
weight of the extremes of poverty and wealth. If wealth is
concentrated in too few hands then it will simply buy power, as is
increasingly the case in the United States. If the poor begin to
outnumber the middle class and society is bifurcated into two camps,
the wealthy few and the impoverished masses, then the democratic
experiment is bound to fail, as in the classic example of the banana
republic or the French Revolution. The masses vote and elect huge
majorities which quickly demand a redistribution of the fruits of
society. The wealthy call out the military and the democratic
experiment ends in failure. This is why it has been such a long and
painful process to establish representative government in so many
parts of the world. And this is why our Founding Fathers understood
that the most important function of government is to prevent the rise
of a new aristocracy. As Arthur Schlesinger points out in his “Age
of Jackson” the revolution in America was not simply a question of
home rule but who would rule at home.
Benjamin
Franklin, so the legend goes, was stopped on the street as
deliberations ended on the new Constitution: A woman walked up to him
and asked “What kind of government are we to have Mr.
Franklin?”
“A
republic if you can keep it”,
replied the old inventor.
If
we can keep it….the founders knew this was an historical
experiment, they knew their creation was a fragile one and many did
not expect the republic to outlive them. As Schlesinger points out
many not only distrusted the Eastern Mercantile interests but
understood from their reading of history that a true republic must be
born of a large and controlling class of middling station. And so in
their reading of history the great undoing of the early experiments
in Greece and Rome was not slavery but empire, and the consequent
concentrations of economic power into fewer hands. The Lees and
Henry’s of Virginia, not to mention Jefferson, understood the need
for a middle class not only to create but be nurtured by a democratic
process that would, as Bentham would so eloquently state a century
later, bring the most benefits to the most people: A middle class by
definition. This had the singular advantage of creating an umpire
strong enough to mediate between the extremes of wealth and poverty,
to create opportunity with as little oppression and exploitation as
decent society will allow. They were quite explicit about this:
Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers that one of the most
important reasons for adopting the proposed constitution is to
regulate the economy. Writing in Federalist No. 22 of the defects
rendering the Articles of Confederation “altogether unfit for the
administration of the affairs of the union”, Hamilton continued,
“The want of a power to regulate commerce is by all parties allowed
to be of the number…It is indeed evident, on the most superficial
view, that there is no object, either as it respects trade or
finance, that more strongly demands a federal superintendence…”,
something entirely overlooked by the Heritage Foundation and the
Federalist Society as they foist their reactionary vision of freedom
to mask their agenda of exploitation.
Last
week CSPAN televised a forum at the University of Oklahoma featuring,
among others, the likes of Mayor Bloomberg of New York, Former
Senator John Danforth of Missouri, Gary Hart and former Senator Sam
Nunn of Georgia. The topic was political discourse with the general
consensus being that partisan politics have poisoned the well making
it difficult to govern in the United States. I have much respect for
the members of this panel but I must respectfully say that they have
it precisely wrong.
The
vitriol that now courses through the veins of American politics has
been a long time in the making and whose origins can be traced to the
opening statement of Barry Goldwater at the 1964 Republican National
Convention at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. Taking his place at
the podium to address a national audience as he accepted his party’s
nomination for president of the United States, Goldwater’s screed
ended with:
“Extremism
in the pursuit of liberty is no vice and moderation in the pursuit of
justice is no virtue”.
The
house came down as the throng that had booed and hooted Nelson
Rockefeller from the stage rose as one to cheer their new champion as
he prepared to make war on the national consensus that was the New
Deal. Goldwater had stormed the ramparts and taken the party. He had
driven the eastern establishment, represented now by Rockefeller who,
as Eisenhower and Nixon before him, had accepted the tenets of the
New Deal and in their 8 years in power saw no reason to lower capital
gains taxes of 45% and upper income taxes in the low 90’s. Nor had
they tried to tamper with Social Security, privatize the TVA as Wilke
would have done, or break the unions. The Cons went down to
historical defeat at the hands of the arch-liberal Lyndon Johnson and
all was well with the world.
But
they had given birth to vermin. Stink tanks arose housing those who
would lie sleepless at night masturbating to visions of taking
America back into the 19th century, and recreating the working
conditions of the Chicago slaughter houses. Foremost among them were
William F. Buckley whose national socialist review became a
mouthpiece for the new religion. Then there was Milton Friedman and
the Chicago School of Economics. These curmudgeons fought for a
decade and a half to gain entrance to the corridors of power but were
blocked by the likes of Richard Nixon, perhaps America’s last
liberal president. Finally, in the wake of Watergate and Vietnam, the
surtax and the stagflation, the country was introduced to a new
element into the political arena, given legitimacy by a peanut farmer
from Georgia, the religious right. Vaulting Carter into the
presidency, Jimmy managed in four short years to alienate both his
religious conservative base and the liberal wing of the party---for
inflation, as noted earlier, is a cruel mistress. The result was that
what would become the “Christian Coalition” bolted the Democratic
Party and crossed the isle to become the foot soldiers in Ronald
Reagan’s assault on the ramparts of the old guard. The rest, as
they say, is history. Suddenly the Cons found they had an army at
their disposal and could now match the democrats in the field. And so
talking the talk of compassion, promising an eternal ‘morning in
America’, the Reaganaughts marshaled their army to do battle
against the old New Deal. The problem was that to do battle with the
New Deal is to do battle with the middle class. To wage war on the
New Deal is to wage war on the middle class. To wage war on the New
Deal is, in the absence of another middle class Magna Carta, to wage
war on the Republic itself.
And
so it has been. Beginning with the war against organized labor, the
Cons and their Larvae the Neo-cons have destroyed the bargaining
position of the middle class in the marketplace. Moreover they have
systematically dismantled the “countervailing power”, to use
economist John Kenneth Galbraith’s term, of Labor to Corporate
America. In the partisan war between the parties the Conservatives
have waged a relentless war against the economic foundation of the
New Deal not only reducing union membership to levels not seen since
before the Wagoner Act was passed but making it imperative that the
Democrats, in order to compete, seek funding from the same lobbyists
and interests as the Republican Party.
This
has produced, on the Democratic side, a complete disconnect between
rhetoric and reality. While posturing rhetorically as the tribune of
the people the Democrats have substantively offered up agenda’s and
enacted legislation that can be characterized at best as “Bush-Lite”.
In fact in the 1970’s, even before Reagan, it was the Democrats who
championed deregulation and taxed unemployment benefits. But such
bi-partisan consensus, born of the near Dictatorship of Capital,
cannot mask the growing destruction of the old American Consensus
that lies underneath and increasingly clamors to be heard manifesting
itself in the tactics of ‘cut and burn’ that has been our
politics in recent decades. In fact it has become increasingly
important for the elites—representing now only the wealth—to use
ever draconian measures to keep their hold on power. Reagan had to
negotiate with the Iranians to hold the hostages until after the
election. Bush used Willy Horton and the race card, tried to drive
wedges into every fissure at the base of the republic to win
temporary political advantage. ‘Ol Two-Cows” had to savage
several war heroes and commit the outright theft of two national
elections to get and hold power. And now, like any respectable banana
republic we now have foreign observers monitoring our elections. It
remains to be seen what outrages await us as this election cycle
proceeds. Already Dennis Kucinich is questioning the ballot in New
Hampshire, pointing out that Hillary won on electronic voting
machines, Obama on the paper and mechanical ballots. Harbinger of
things to come?
As
our language becomes more strident you can hear the indignation from
Fox Noise and the Neo-Con spin machine about fear mongering and
‘class war’, conveniently overlooking the fact that the wealthy
have been waging war on us for three decades now. But the Liberals
are not yet waging war on the rich. No one in the race has called for
anything like socialized medicine or even a return to the tax codes
of Harry Truman or even Dick Nixon. Still the rhetoric is heating up
and will, in the succeeding election cycles, become white hot as the
middle class goes the way of the pterodactyl. It cannot be otherwise.
For the truth is that it is not the rhetoric that creates the class
divisions but class divisions that give voice to the rhetoric. The
panel had it precisely on its head. One does not heal class divisions
by toning down the rhetoric; one turns down the rhetoric by healing
class divisions. Read any speech By FDR referring to the “malefactors
of wealth’ or his diatribes against bankers and Wall Street. But
FDR healed the nation. In this context the panel at Oklahoma and
Barack’s campaign ring hollow. If Barack is to be the
transformational figure he portends, he must confront with righteous
indignation as Martin, FDR and Lincoln did before him. He must
introduce, like Bobby, the ‘other America’
and take his campaign and the cameras to the Mississippi Delta and
the slums of New York, to the rural poor and the Indian reservations;
foremost he must show the country what it already knows and walk,
with the press in tow, the boarded up main streets of America. And he
must do it in ways that inspire.” (1)
The Greeks, our history teachers taught us, gave us Democracy. What they didn't teach us is why they did so. The Greeks introduced democracy in order to wrest control of the polity, the polis, from the oligarchs. It was the maldistribution of wealth producing a self-serving 'elite' that gave rise to a democratic movement in ancient Athens. Democracy was birthed by wealth distribution or, rather, lack of it. The question of adequate wealth distribution is foundational to any democratic order.
It is for this reason that modern fascist movements have been at war with the Middle Classes. Among the first casualties of any fascist movement, when it gains power, is to eliminate the labor unions, followed by the creation of a crony capitalist order that rewards not efficiencies but loyalties to the governing elite, the governing oligarchy. Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Franco's Spain, Pinochet's Chile, Putin's Russia are cases in point. Once they seize power they immediately begin suppression of all other power centers that dare threaten their growing illegitimacy.
The decades-long assault on the New Deal, the assault on the Middle Classes, has now metastasized into full-blown fascism. Carter didn't understand it; Clinton didn't understand it either. Nor did Obama and Biden. And now here it is. The oligarchs have taken over the country. It is now pointless to call or write your congressman. Unless you contribute significantly to his or her campaign, you will not get a hearing. It is now pay to play. Hell, Caesar Disgustus' own larvae, Don Jr. has created what he calls “The Executive Club” where to become a member and, apparently, to gain quick access to the Orange Turd himself, you must buy a membership of at least $500,000.00. That's half of the current membership now charged at Mar-O-Lardo.
First they purchase power and then, failing that, they call out the military. Up next, I.C.E. And the national guard.
Impeach and Imprison.
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1. See Protagonist: January 13, 2008: Banana Republic, Transcendental Meditation
