= new reply since forum marked as read
Response to cali (Original post)
....acknowledge that for a human being he's managing pretty well under duress. Obama's not a god or a saint, he's the president. I don't expect perfection. So far he's managed to not be assassinated, though, and I guess that counts as some sort of miracle. 
not.a.joke.
Despite the overwhelming obstruction from the GOP and the stochastic terrorism of the lunatic fringe media, he's still managed to move forward and present a calm demeanor when things go pear-shaped. We are not in any new wars, are we? He pushed forward on LGBT rights and same sex marriage at the federal and military levels, and now the states are falling like dominoes. Right?
The DOJ is taking an interest in voting rights, as well they should now that the GOP and SCOTUS have gutted the Voting Rights Act. Slowly, methodically, and I hope there's enough time left...
At each juncture, when things happen, it turns out that Obama's been working like mad behind the scenes directing his people to line things up, and then we see the results -- but unlike Bush he doesn't grandstand. I notice Osama bin Laden is quite dead though.
I'm pretty troubled about those kids at the border, and I'm not sure where Obama's attention is in regards to them and all the other undocumenteds that came before them. But I also notice that every single proposal he has made to Congress in regards to immigration law has been ignored and let to die in the House. If he proceeds true to form, he will be strategizing behind the scenes to see what he can do anyway -- at least that is the pattern he's exhibited so far. If not, that will be pretty disappointing.
Blind trust? Absolutely not. I'm much too old for that. I just observe a particular type of character in the man and a particular type of intellect, and watch it play out time after time. I celebrate whatever victories come along, and I do so with my friends here, even though being exiled to the BOG seems pretty goddamned stupid on a "Democratic" board. (Oops, was that my out-loud voice?)
Work on GOTV 2014, seriously, because if the GOP manages to get a majority in both Houses it will be pretty much the end of this presidency, and through no fault of Obama's.
I absolutely agree about the importance of 2014.
Response to cali (Reply #11)
I am so disappointed. [URL=
.html][IMG]
[/IMG][/URL]
And about time. 
Response to The Magistrate (Reply #3)
Last edited Sat Jul 19, 2014, 04:26 PM - Edit history (1)
Or Marx, you might be able to tell the difference.
as if a political messiah will deliver us from "corporatism" is frustratingly absurd.
I agree we need to do whatever we can to improve things, and I would like to see actual policies or points of actions to work on, but vague references to capitulating to "corporatists" don't achieve that.
Now we have someone here alternately calling me "Third Way" and a fascist. 
It's not a matter of seeking unrealistic "purist" goals. The first step has always been to try and at least stop the Democratic Party from backsliding from its claimed role as the party that is the balancing force to GOP conservatism.
Before the 1930s, what we call "the Democratic Party" was by no means anything like what you see today (which evolved after FDR and gelled during the '60s with the flight of the "Dixicrats" of the south, to the Republican Party. The GOP, after 28/36 years of Democratic control, decided to cannibalize and distort the message of "states rights" and individual rights and attract/nurture a disaffected group. These Dixicrats, the descendents of those who lost a civil war over the ownership of my own ancestors and their ability to actually have the Constitution apply to them (to live like a human being), insisted on their right to their property as "individuals", and to do with it as they pleased. They were the agricultural capitalists. Meanwhile the northern Republicans from the party of Lincoln, were your bankers and industrial capitalists (steel, chemicals, misc. manufacturing), who originally battled those southern capitalists - not because of any lofty goal of equal rights for all, but because they felt it unfair that one group benefited from free labor vs their being required to pay for it. But by joining ranks as capitalists, they could muster resources to the benefit of both.
So before you describe any "back-sliding", you need to understand where these ideologies have come from with respect to party affiliation, and how they are evolving within their new, "modern" configuration. This re-configuration has not settled down yet and that is why simple black and white solutions will not succeed.
They were not pushing for some fantasy -- Just trying to make sure that any "modernizations" were balanced and were not being done totally to advance the interests of the Super Banks at the expense of the economy and the majority of the population.
No one in this thread is disagreeing with the destructive results of Reaganomics. And ironically, the very coalition that helped propel Reagan and his minions (the social conservatives) were unceremoniously tossed aside and suppressed by Reagan and the GOP, only to pop up again 20+ years later to assault all of our sensibilities because they refuse to be denied again by the party that used them. Yet their message as an extreme, has only resonated to a small portion of the electorate (although that portion is willing or able to vote unfettered). Their strategy is all "stick" and no "carrot", and this does nothing but breed selfishness and hatred. We (as liberals/progressives, etc) shouldn't have to rely on all "stick" to beat the electorate senseless, although some stick is definitely needed if used intelligently.
But again, as long as one denies the fact that this country focuses on money ("economy"
versus other things ("well-being" , then you won't be able to work towards some sort of balance as the two are intertwined in this modern society. E.g., the desire to lessen the burden of work to increase the well-being, has in fact promoted the mechanization of it - which paradoxically hurts the worker when it comes to the means to obtain goods and services through compensation for work. This does not mean that I promote going back to "manual labor" as a solution (and that was something that China promulgated to create a Foxconn). But this has to be factored into any solution without assuming that "money" isn't relevant.
What has happened however, in a sortof underground way, is the return of the "cottage industry" via the internet, with a proliferation of pay-forwards and other communal activities outside of the main economic structure, and this tends to mitigate, however much or little, the negative impact of the centralized corporate state. This is why the focus on the internet (and control of it) by the capitalists.
Again - look at history and see how things have evolved or devolved based on past strategies, rather than knee-jerk reacting without thought. The concentration of wealth has gone on throughout human history. It is sadly a part of human nature. The strong will vanquish the weak. But the clever can outsmart the strong. It's a matter of tactics. One of the strategies that the GOP has used, is the power of the megaphone - i.e., they bought up bundles and bundles of media outlets (tv, radio, print) in order to bombard our society with their twisted message. What media outlets do liberals own? You see, in order to proceed with the ideals-based outline, you can't just type away furiously here to the choir. The message needs to go out far and wide and the purveyors of the message need to accept an economic "loss" when investing in such. The fact that > 500,000 protested the Iraq War back in 2003 and it was barely even mentioned on the news, is a case in point in the difference of "owning the megaphone" and the consequences of not having one. And so we descend into a cycle of self-flagellating about "messaging" and not seeing the forest for the trees and how to deal with it.
The fact that as a black woman, I am here today able to vote and generally live where I want (dependent on financial means), is a testament to the fact that the system IS "reformable" - with sacrifice (however tenable these rights are). But the problem with many on DU is that they think that 1 person holds the key to all that reform and they give a pass to the rest of the players that are required to make change happen - and that includes the public and every one of our elected officials. The way to a solution requires a slog towards getting through to those folks rather than take the easy way out by slamming a single one at the top.
This country has been through a bunch of cycles since its founding. This includes social cycles and financial cycles. Before the Crash of '29, there were various "Panics" in the 1800s. But the sad part is that it always goes back to the same thing - "Capitalism", where what we call "corporatist" today was the "industrialist" during the turn of the late 19th & early 20th century, and was the wealthy banker, shipper, or farmer of the 18th and early 19th centuries. We are just going through the latest cycle.... meaning we will be continually back-sliding or moving forward a little in a regular fashion. The key would be to work to try to mitigate the back-slide without causing what could be an even worse backlash. "Jim Crow" was a backlash. "Reganomics" was a backlash.
Not unlike what happened during Reconstruction when a whole group of enslaved individuals were finally given freedom and some rights and then those were taken away, state-by-state, via "Jim Crow" laws. It's really no difference - i.e., there is always a letup and then the tide turns... over and over. It all depends on what era you happen to live in. But as a note - this backlash usually starts at the state levels and that is a focus that the party must never lose sight of. The fact that you have same-sex marriages and marijuana legalizations occurring at the state level is an example of state-focus to make change. But if Democrats sit out these mid-term elections, then backlash processes at the state level, like "Voter ID" or "Right to Work", gain hold.
But the fact remains that in more recent history the Democrats did stand for a time as the necessary representation of liberal/progressive values. And we NEED that counterbalance to the GOP and Corporate Power. The Dems won their support as the party that represented that. And they (we) should not be allowed to abandon it.
I agree but again, because "corporate" (or "capitalist"
is imbedded into the very interpretations of the founders of this country, then everything will tend to skew back to their intent, by hook or by crook. The very words of the Constitution belie this trend, which has encouraged people to fight it, but outside of sheer brute force, it requires use of the very system that is loathed, in order to beat it. And that requires that those liberals with the resources, have the heart to fight against themselves.
Case in point is FDR, which it seems is almost universally ignored as a member of what we would dub (in the modern sense), the "1%". Similarly, Johnson's wife "Ladybird", and the Kennedys, also descended from the "1%" class.
I sure as hell don't consider myself "pro-corporate" or "ThirdWay" or "DLC". But I do realize that in the society as it stands in this phase of the latest cycle, $$$ is needed to make change and it can be done without sacrificing principle. So for example, I am vehemently against the UNCF taking $25 million blood money from the Kochs (something that has divided the black community), but I wouldn't necessarily throw the Phillips Academy graduate Patrick Kennedy out with the bathwater.
Actually the Phil Gramm-initiated 300-page repeal of Glass-Steagall that was attached to an Omnibus government appropriations bill, was the culmination and final crown jewel of Reaganomics and not something that Clinton made up himself. Clinton and the rest of the DLC founders to include the wealthy Al Gore & Sam Nunn (whose daughter is currently running for Senate in GA) among others, had their own agenda that went beyond what many of us feel should occur with respect to implementing a liberal agenda, and that is the complete embracing of "business" as the solution to everything (including things that shouldn't have "business" lingo attached to it at all - like government services, healthcare, and education). In essence, they may push for government funding of liberal social causes and safety-nets, but they want these institutions run like businesses. The (modern) GOP, on the other hand, wants no part in anything dealing with social causes, let alone any funding for them. And thus they have relegated these issues to the religious establishments and charities to handle.
So as an alternate, there are those of us who would like to see our tax money collected fairly and used wisely without the imposition of corporatism onto certain functions. But given that we operate under a system of labor for fiat as compensation (i.e, our economic system relies on capitalism (money) to function), then we cannot summarily dismiss businesses nor can we assume that the tax coffers can or will be willingly shifted to non-business functions (social/government) without a major fight.
I hate to quote my Mother (and probably other parents over the centuries) - "And this too shall pass". When this country finds itself so far to one end of the spectrum. then the whiplash back the other way eventually comes. The "Silent Generation" that my mother belongs to (with the severe discipline meted out due to the hard times of growing up during the Depression) gave way to the major swing the other way towards what you see happened in the '60s. The difference nowadays, considering that our economy has become "global", is how the swing will manifest here vs elsewhere. The tactics of the '30s under FDR with the WPA to address the economic hardships caused by the Depression and environmental disaster (dust bowl), was supplanted by the MIC, that actually created the very engine that fueled the economy of the '50s & '60s. The very MIC that Eisenhower eventually railed against on his way out of office. Today, the very same MIC has bankrupted our economy. The difference then versus now being that back then, we had become isolationalist and made our own products to support the war effort... and we built the homes, infrastructure, and consumer goods needed for returning soldiers post-WW II. The war was paid down by a 90% effective tax rate on the top earners of the day. Nowadays, we have contracted all that out to the low-cost (near no-cost) "global" workforce, where we barely make anything anymore and you have "new industrialists" who make money off of micro-trades on the stock market, rather than by creating a product or performing a service.
Unfortunately on DU, there IS a group who have focused solely on the one and that one is the only one who can change it all. No Congress needed. Their prescription - "1.) Put on WalkingShoes™ 2.) Use the BullyPulpit™ 3.) Tell the other side to F*ckoff™ 4.) Create LegislationviaExecutiveOrder™ 5.) Screw the SupremeCourt™ all while Presidentin'-while-black
As long as election finance reform is repealed (due to Citizen's United) and as long as McLame runs around yelling at clouds rather than trying to put McCain-Feingold back onto the legislative agenda, then sadly, all sides will need to bow to corporate money.
Why? Because liberals own little or no megaphones and the Fairness Doctrine exists no more.
The insistence that the President, who is a student of history and taught Constitutional law, is completely naive, is just silly. In order to halfway get something done, we have to recognize that over half the population of this country doesn't care about politics and they care even less when they encounter the extremes. But there must be persistence and we must get control of some media in order to move the liberal agenda forward, because "repetition is knowledge" and the populace has heard too much of the GOP's loony repetition and very little or none of ours.
While I was not on DU at the time, I knew that when Obama was elected he would disappoint many. My aunt was certain he would legalized marijuana. He said nothing of the kind during the debates, and in fact he said the opposite. Others expressed similar fantasies entirely unrelated to anything the man actually said. Here people have expressed anger he didn't immediately end the war in Afghanistan, when in fact he ran on escalating it. While all politicians make and break promises, Obama has been blamed for breaking promises he never made.
As for Warren, I have no doubt you are right. The idea that people can sit back and wait for a presidential candidate to descend and bestow upon them everything they write about online is absurd.
I'll also add I have no idea what people actually want to change in regard to corporations. To say a President supports corporations is to say very little. Can we hear about specific reforms? And why is it that the presidency and the presidency alone is where they must take place? Why can't we all work on doing something about that right now rather than waiting for a presidential messiah?
Meanwhile, the GOP is poised to take control of the Senate and increase their presence in the House. Even if Warren were elected and is as ideologically pure as they imagine, what she could do from the Oval Office is extremely limited. Her powers will be no more magical than Obama's. We need to pass legislation to get much of anything done.
But then I'm a "Third Way" fascist, so what would I know. 
except in DU la-la land. 
and I agree with you 100 %. There are those here who seem to think they rule all logic and if you don't agree your a "fantasy-world idealists, is to name-call." Notice the hypocrisy in that statement.
Yup's they're fulls of the logics.
-p
kinda scary sometimes.
Does no one around here read Marx? How out of it do you have to be to refer to my posts as libertarian? 
OK.........................
"Doesn't mean i agree with it". Heard that one a million times. = still wrong.
I read this thread hours ago and I'm still horrified. I'm horrified to find out what people really think. The explanation for their actions is so much worse than I thought.
I'm gonna scream now, but I'm not screaming at you. It's the frustration that these people who have been bashing "the left" (or any other iteration such as the "far left", loony left, pony-wanting, non-reality, idealogue, Snowden-lovers, and garden variety "racists" ARE IN FACT LIBERTARIANS!!! When you are so craven as to think that capital, pure capital, is the rubric for government policy, you are a libertarian. Do not pass go. If you think selling out the commons, privatizing everything, putting the rights of corporations over people is the purpose of government--to serve capital--do not stop on Republican, land straight on LIBERTARIAN.
And all these posters, who all this time criticized those who did not want to sell out Democratic ideals, who defended the indefensible, they are wholeheartedly agreeing that the purpose of the US government is to serve capital! Jesus Christ, why not vote for Romney who embodied that idea?
Last edited Sun Jul 20, 2014, 12:54 AM - Edit history (1)
(Cont. of my first post to you)
The very notion of rights as resting in the individual is a development of the classical 18th century liberalism that was the political justification of and corollary to capitalism.
Misunderstanding about the Founding Fathers attacking corporations, I believe, comes from confusion over historical context and vocabulary of the era. I provide an example from a leading history of Brazil, now retired from Yale, Emilia Viotti da Costa. She is writing about the ideas underlying Brazilian independence, which shared the same influences as those that gave rise to independence in the American English colonies.
In Europe, liberalism was originally a bourgeois ideology, intimately related to the development of capitalism and the crisis of the seigneurial [feudal] world. Liberal notions were born out of the struggles of the bourgeoisie against the abuses of royal authority, the privileges of the clergy and the nobility, the monopolies that inhibited production, and traditional obstacles to free circulation, free trade, and free labor. In their struggle against absolutism, liberals defended the theory of social contract, stressed the sovereignty of the people and the supremacy of the law, fought for the division of powers and for representative forms of government. To destroy corporate privilege, they made freedom, equality before the law, and the right to property universal rights of men. And to the traditional regulations that inhibited production and trade they opposed free trade and free labor. Although rooted in an expanding capitalist economy and in the experience of the bourgeoisie, the liberal message was universal enough to appeal to other social groups that, for one reason or another, felt oppressed by institutions of the 'ancien regime' The Brazilian Empire: Myths and Histories
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~triner/ModernLA/Liberalism.htm
People see opposition to "corporate privilege" and they think of modern-day multinational corporations. Corporate in that era in fact meant the power of groups, like the Church or royal monopolies. The word first came into use in the 16th century, according to Merriam Webster's Dictionary:
Origin of CORPORATE
First Known Use: 1512
At that time, nor in the late 18th century, did there exist entities similar to GE or Citgroup. The corporation as we understand it today, as an organ of big capitalist interests, did not exist in that era. The above reference to challenges to corporate privilege refers to exclusive rights wielded by the Church , the Crown, and royal monopolies under mercantilism, not capitalist business corporations as we understand the term today.
Classical liberalism emerged in opposition to mercantilism, economies in which the Crown controlled and benefited from commerce, and granted exclusive licenses to certain businesses (be they slave traders, tobacco monopolies, or other commercial entities) that were allowed to trade with their approval. Any commerce that existed outside of that was illegal, hence piracy. Liberals like Adam Smith championed free trade as a more efficient than mercantilism and free-wage labor as more efficient than slavery. These were fundamental tenets to capitalism, and were at the foundation of the American Republic, hence the Constiution's emphasis on individual rights.
Like you, Smith believed capitalism was natural and would take care of itself (the invisible hand). It's superiority as an economic system was seen as so inevitable, simply removing restrictions would allow free trade, and hence--they believed--liberty, to prevail. (Sounds a bit like George W Bush and the neo-cons, doesn't it? There is a reason that the term neo-liberalism is used to describe privatization).
The US Republic was established according to the liberal ideas of men like Smith and John Locke. Our constitution bears their influence and as such is a quintessential capitalist document. The founding of the US is inseparable from the development of capitalism itself, and its political structures are meant to promote the "free" development of capital and liberty, which are seen as synonymous.
Now, if one does not believe that capital and liberty are synonymous or that capital takes care of itself but is instead carefully nurtured by the state, as I do, then one approach is to examine the structures and consequences of the capitalist state. http://bobjessop.org/2013/11/04/the-capitalist-state-marxist-theories-and-methods/
It is not the only approach, and I do not suggest it as absolute truth, but it is historically grounded . It most certainly is NOT libertarianism.
It is how I interpret history, and I cannot present a bourgeois interpretation rooted in American mythology as fact. I must leave that to others who buy into those ideas, of which there are many.
Classical liberalism is the ideology you refer to.
Edit: I though libertarianism was a more recent notion. It turns out it dates back to just after the American Revolution:
Libertarian came to mean an advocate or defender of liberty, especially in the political and social spheres, as early as 1796, when the London Packet printed on 12 February: "Lately marched out of the Prison at Bristol, 450 of the French Libertarians."[14] The word was again used in a political sense in 1802, in a short piece critiquing a poem by "the author of Gebir", and has been used in this context since.[15][16][17]
The use of the word libertarian to describe a new set of political positions has been traced to the French cognate, libertaire, coined in a scathing letter French libertarian communist Joseph Déjacque wrote to mutualist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1857, castigating him for his sexist political views.[18][19] Déjacque also used the term for his anarchist publication Le Libertaire: Journal du Mouvement Social, which was printed from 9 June 1858 to 4 February 1861. In the mid-1890s, Sébastien Faure began publishing a new Le Libertaire while France's Third Republic enacted the lois scélérates ("villainous laws"
, which banned anarchist publications in France. Libertarianism has frequently been used as a synonym for anarchism since this time.[20][21][22]
Although the word libertarian continues to be widely used to refer to socialists internationally, its meaning in the United States has deviated from its political origins.[23][24] Libertarianism in the United States has been described as conservative on economic issues and liberal on personal freedom[25] (for common meanings of conservative and liberal in the United States); it is also often associated with a foreign policy of non-interventionism.[26][27] Since the resurgence of neoliberalism in the 1970s, free-market capitalist libertarianism has spread beyond North America via think tanks and political parties.[28][29]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism
Me too. 
....to see how it plays out. It's 3:15 a.m. where I am and I need to 
Cheers Bain, Magistrate....
Hekate
and bizarrely so.
The people's economic interests are never the same as those of capital, quite obviously. I never claimed they were. I would think it would have been more than obvious that I am highly critical of capitalism and the political system in this country that supports it. The difference is I don't pretend it just emerged during the past six years. I KNOW it was central to the very founding of the nation.
It was weird enough to read the person's comments, but then to have enough person agree.
Edit: Okay, I think I get it, by the country, you don't actually mean the people, you mean the upper-middle class who are pissed off about starting to be treated like the rest of us. I think I'm starting to figure what this particular political perspective is about.
All I can say is welcome to America. The rest of us have been living here since the beginning.
An entire shit load.
Succinctly.
Did you think that I would disagree with that assessment? LOL
Good for you!! The more good (by "good" I mean truly liberal) Dems we can get in office at the state level, the better off we all will be. And I wish you all success in PA!
. . . but this is a discussion board. You should be prepared and accept when someone disagrees and not act as if you are the font of all wisdom.
Thing is, most of your posts are deliberately confrontational and personalized, like this one. That invites, I think, the types of responses I believe you're complaining about.
Here's an idea. Just make a post about what you believe and leave the personalization and lecturing of DUers out of it.
"these folks"
