> We should pause here to consider that this is Karl Rove's cherished period
of American history; it was, as I read him, the seminal influence on the man
who is said to be George W.'s brain. From his own public comments and my
reading of the record, it is apparent that Karl Rove has modeled the Bush
presidency on that of William McKinley, who was in the White House from 1897
to 1901, and modeled himself on Mark Hanna, the man who virtually
manufactured McKinley. Hanna had one consummate passion – to serve corporate
and imperial power. It was said that he believed "without compunction, that
the state of Ohio existed for property. It had no other function...Great
wealth was to be gained through monopoly, through using the State for
private ends; it was axiomatic therefore that businessmen should run the
government and run it for personal profit."
...Any who opposed the oligarchy were smeared as disturbers of the peace,
socialists, anarchists, "or worse." Back then they didn't bother with hollow
euphemisms like "compassionate conservatism" to disguise the raw reactionary
politics that produced government "of, by, and for" the ruling corporate
class. They just saw the loot and went for it.
...However, I'm just as puzzled as to why, with right wing wrecking crews blasting away at social benefits once considered invulnerable, Democrats are fearful of being branded "class warriors" in a war the other side started and is determined to win. I don't get why conceding your opponent's premises and fighting on his turf isn't the sure-fire prescription for irrelevance and ultimately obsolescence. But I confess as well that I don't know how to resolve the social issues that have driven wedges into your ranks. And I don't know how to reconfigure democratic politics to fit into an age of soundbites and polling dominated by a media oligarchy whose corporate journalists are neutered and whose right-wing publicists have no shame.
Democrats grew so proprietary in this town that a fat, complacent political
establishment couldn't recognize its own intellectual bankruptcy or the
beltway that was growing around it and beginning to separate it from the
rest of the country. The failure of democratic politicians and public
thinkers to respond to popular discontents – to the daily lives of workers,
consumers, parents, and ordinary taxpayers – allowed a resurgent
conservatism to convert public concern and hostility into a crusade to
resurrect social Darwinism as a moral philosophy, multinational corporations
as a governing class, and the theology of markets as a transcendental belief
system.
> As a citizen I don't like the consequences of this crusade, but you have
to respect the conservatives for their successful strategy in gaining
control of the national agenda. Their stated and open aim is to change how
America is governed - to strip from government all its functions except
those that reward their rich and privileged benefactors. They are quite
candid about it, even acknowledging their mean spirit in accomplishing it.
Their leading strategist in Washington - the same Grover Norquist – has
famously said he wants to shrink the government down to the size that it
could be drowned in a bathtub. More recently, in commenting on the fiscal
crisis in the states and its affect on schools and poor people, Norquist
said, "I hope one of them" – one of the states – "goes bankrupt." So much
for compassionate conservatism. But at least Norquist says what he means and
means what he says. The White House pursues the same homicidal dream without
saying so. Instead of shrinking down the government, they're filling the
bathtub with so much debt that it floods the house, water-logs the economy,
and washes away services for decades that have lifted millions of Americans
out of destitution and into the middle-class. And what happens once the
public's property has been flooded? Privatize it. Sell it at a discounted
rate to the corporations.
> © Copyright 2003 by TruthOut.org
>