Bad Ideas

George McGovern endorsed a terrible book, The Promise of the Coming Dark Age: it saw the Cambodian Khmer Rouge as the great promise: our communitarian future, in which capitalism would be transmuted into abundance for all.

From 1975-1979, the Khmer Rouge murdered a larger share of their people than the Nazis or Stalin: virtually any non-Maoist with education, or anyone from the middle class and any city-dweller. Later, anyone not ideologically "reliable" was eliminated, as well. The total murdered were between 1.7 and 2.3 million out of a population of only 7 million: between a fourth and a third of all Cambodians.

The idea that attracted McGovern was the Khmer Rouge's advocacy for a communitarian (Communist) agrarian society that was supposed to be fully self-sustaining, and purged of all western influence or technology. McGovern, et al ignored the violence, the authoritarianism, the ideological rigidity and the KR's flight from reality.

Finally, Vietnam ousted the KR in 1979, but Cambodia has suffered famines and near social collapse ever since, unable to overcome the KR's nearly successful attempt to destroy urban Cambodia and western education.

The KR glorified their agrarian past, just as the GOP glorifies a Norman Rockwell view of "real America." Ayn Rand, their ideological guru, glorified the unrestrained entrepreneur stifled by big government. As politicians attempt to put her vision into practice, it might not be so bloody as the KR, but many more will be impoverished. Randism inspires Republican enthusiasm for the sequester, in which the poor and middle class lose the services they depend on, while a small elite benefit from the cuts through privatization and lower taxes.

Ever since Reagan broke the Air Traffic Controllers' strike, the corporate wealthy have successfully carried Republicans and many Democrats with them. Since 1980, income and wealth have concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Disasters, like Katrina in New Orleans, and Sandy in New York, and the nationwide implosion of the financial sector in 2008, have accelerated the process. Wall Street was bailed out, but the country as a whole is still only slowly recovering. The vast majority of productivity gains and new wealth created since the implosion has ended up in the pockets of the wealthy; the banks that precipitated the crisis have gotten bigger and wealthier, yet last month only 88,000 private sector jobs were created. The nation needs at least 150,000 per month to recover.

The wealthy want the Government to cut back, not because there is a real, immediate debt crisis, but because continuing high unemployment serves them: it keeps wages low, workers compliant.

Unless there is some revolutionary upheaval, some Hugo Chavez, the takeover of the wealthy corporate class will continue, much like the monopolization of wealth and power in the hands of the Roman Senatorial class in the late 4th and early 5th century. It won't end well.

We Won!

I remember when Harold, the school's maintenance man, came into the dining room as we kids were eating breakfast, and announced to my father: "We won!" The president re-elected was Truman, and the year was 1948.

Money didn't play such an outsized role in 1948 as it did in 2012, but the most important thing: "money," as the song goes, "doesn't buy you love." That was proven pretty decisively in 2012; money didn't buy love for Romney.

Tuesday night I stayed up until NBC declared Obama's victory--I didn't hear about Karl Rove's objections until the next afternoon. Obama really did win and it wasn't as close as Truman over Dewey.

Obama didn't campaign against a "do-nothing" Congress, but he could have; perhaps he should have. Considering Republican obstruction in Congress, it's extraordinary that Obama won on his accomplishments and his character--despite my evangelical friend's deeply held belief that Barack is the Antichrist.

What justifies Obama the Antichrist label? Maybe that he won? Or maybe that he's black, but doesn't act like a 'Yassuh, no Suh' N….., but as a powerful, articulate, well-educated man, who happens to be black.

Some now say Obama is a brilliant politician; I agree. But Obama's win, and that of the Democratic candidates who won a majority of Senate seats, despite the $100's of millions deployed against them, won because, in a democracy, numbers of voters ultimately prevail against raw cash. And Americans, like any people not cowed by authoritarianism, reacted to attempts to suppress them with impressive, stoic determination to push back and prevail. They may have voted in greater numbers than in the previous election when Republicans didn't so actively try to suppress the vote.

That's the strongest message and mandate in this election. Issues like global warming, collective bargaining rights and even inequality were often ignored by both sides--a defeat for democracy--but such a surge of money into the campaign (the money raised by billionaires and spent by "super-pacs"), encouraged Republicans to be more open and more aggressive about their extremist policies.

That was a good thing, because of the reaction: Americans reacted to the concerted effort to buy their votes through indirection, and they didn't like it. They turned out in droves in response to the attempts at voter suppression, and apparently ignored, or discounted, the negative ads flying nationwide. They may also have voted more decisively for Obama because of his real action in the face of Hurricane Sandy.

The day after the election, we still had a slowly diminishing empire, an artificially created "fiscal cliff," and need for a real stimulus to bolster jobs growth. And we still had Republican control of the House. But, for the moment, we've dodged the ultimate takeover of the selfish class, our equivalent of Roman Senators in the Fifth Century.

That's something to be thankful for.