Is a New Political System Emerging in This Country?

[Uncle Joe]

http://billmoyers.com/2015/03/25/new-american-order/

Have you ever undertaken some task you felt less than qualified for, but knew that someone needed to do? Consider this piece my version of that and let me put what I do understand about it in a nutshell: based on developments in our post-9/11 world, we could be watching the birth of a new American political system and way of governing for which, as yet, we have no name.

(snip)

Let me make my case, however minimally, based on five areas in which at least the faint outlines of that new system seem to be emerging: political campaigns and elections; the privatization of Washington through the marriage of the corporation and the state; the de-legitimization of our traditional system of governance; the empowerment of the national security state as an untouchable fourth branch of government; and the demobilization of “we the people.”

Whatever this may add up to, it seems to be based, at least in part, on the increasing concentration of wealth and power in a new plutocratic class and in that ever-expanding national security state. Certainly, something out of the ordinary is underway and yet its birth pangs, while widely reported, are generally categorized as aspects of an exceedingly familiar American system somewhat in disarray.

(snip)

Out of the chaos of this prolonged moment and inside the shell of the old system, a new culture, a new kind of politics, a new kind of governance is being born right before our eyes. Call it what you want. But call it something. Stop pretending it’s not happening.

1. One Percent Elections

2.The Privatization of the State (or the US as a Prospective Third-World Nation)

3.The De-legitimization of Congress and the Presidency

4. The Rise of the National Security State as the Fourth Branch of Government

5. The Demobilization of the American People

6. The Birth of a New System

More detailed information of the "five areas" are on the link.

[HassleCat]

1. Reagan's Fault

One of my hobbies is blaming Reagan for everything, but I think he really does deserve some credit for the things you mention.

[Warpy]

2. I still think this is just the end game, that we're headed for a financial meltdown

that will make 2008 look like a timid rehearsal and that the kings of the universe who have the riskiest investments will be wiped out completely. It will be an enormous overnight game changer.

If what I think is going to happen comes to pass, it will be like 1929, when people said money simply disappeared overnight, leaving people with barter and that's it.

Reagan deserves all the credit for the new financial order concentrating wealth into the fewest hands while people who work for a living are struggling to feed themselves and their children and unable to educate those children. I've long wanted to dig him up to stomp him into dust.

[SusanCalvin]

4. I hate Reagan.

And I worry about my tiny bit of money. Any suggestions beyond stuffing it under the mattress appreciated.

[Warpy]

11. If there is a catastrophic meltdown

no one knows what the right thing to do is until after it's over and people count up what's left.

My own family lost their fortune in the Depression (thank goodness). My grandmother just dug in and held onto her stocks. By 1950 or so, she was quite comfortable on what had survived. That might not work this time. Nobody knows.

Don't use the mattress, though, that's the first place thieves look. El Banco de Cuervo might be better, buried in an old tequila bottle in the back yard. Just don't forget where you put it.

Already, banks have gotten sweetheart legislation passed that allows them to rob depositors if they lose big on derivatives, so I'm not the only one who sees it coming.

[leveymg]

3. Last Century was America's. Tomorrow it will be someone else' s problem

Yes, it's changing. It's called decline. We follow the Soviets, the British and all the rest of the displaced and unsustainable empires. No exceptions.

[SusanCalvin]

5. That's OK with me,

Although I'd prefer to avoid major disruption to the regular people.

[jalan48]

6. I think the National Security State is actually the ruling branch of our government.

It's a branch that is not voted into power and remains largely unchanged regardless of changing political party leadership. When's the last time a President 'cleaned house' and replaced the entrenched bureaucrats of the NSC? The NSC has tremendous power because it has the goods on all the politicians, it knows their secrets. The fact that the CIA actually eavesdropped on the Senate committee investigating it should tell the American people who has the power. American's have been frightened into accepting a government where 'state secrets' are necessary forever, to keep us safe from unidentified threats. We have no way of knowing the quality of this secret protection, it's a secret and cannot be reviewed by an open, elected representative body in full view of the American public.

[Scuba]

14. /\_/\_This right here_/\_/\

[Hydra]

7. It's a crossroads

We have all the makings of either a complete totalitarian-religion-wealth based system of control, or the makings of a completely different democratic system that will throw most of what we currently think is "required" to run a country into the trash.

The big question? Who will win.

[appalachiablue]

8. K & R. Can't we send the oligarchs & their supporters someplace far away? Antarctica for example.

[Augiedog]

9. The cultivation of fear and the fertilization of hate has become the contemperary divide

And conquer tactic of the hidden state apparatus. While a select few, imagine dick Cheney as the kindest of this lot, subdue the proletariat with fear of other and hate for government. This is only a subterfuge for the accumulation of power and a bizarre super status which can be viewed as a proxy of monopoly and the game played by the computer in "Wargames", global thermal nuclear war. You and I are not invited as participants to this joyless carnival of kill but we are expected to be happy, smiley witless victims. Our protestations are a balm to these ghouls to whom us poor would be better off in prisons or in uniforms fighting and dying as strangers in strange lands for strange ideologies in which the higher the body count the better. Doesn't matter whose bodies. The security state is nothing more than a functionary of this hidden state, it is transnational, transideological but always opaque, never transparent in who it's prime cohorts are or whom the advantages of its tentacles protect. From the darkness of extraordinary rendition to the palaces of water boarding, from the secret foreign prisons to the infamous castle of the disappeared in Cuba called Guantanamo it is fear and hate the state is selling and you will buy or else.

[jtuck004]

10. This reminds me a lot of the words written by and about the IWW around 1910-14

" new American political system and way of governing for which, as yet, we have no name. "

In reading the books by Bill Haywood, Mother Jones, others they talk about a system where they would control the assets while someone else owned them. They saw it as different from capitalism, socialism - they rejected communism - the communist organizers sent letters back home complaining about how hard the IWW people were to work with - lol.

They said they didn't know what to call it, but it was more important that everyone join together in the fight. It was probably strategically easier to focus on that since they did not have the economic disparity that is such an inbred part of life here today. I think if they saw the economic disparity of today they would have just picked up axe handles and bats and gotten with it, but that's speculation.

Anyway, the AF of L helped the industrialists break a strike by the industrial union, and began to proselytize the members. The traitors at the AF of L told them they could have a better life if they would just go to work and quit fighting so much for control, just accept a little less. Compromise.

Some members left, said they would join and change things from the inside. Then business conspired with the government to use WWI to jail or kill those who were left, effectively destroying the industrial union. The union of the business interests was allowed to continue, leaving us where we are today.

That's what happened to their attempt at a new system, anyway.

[shadowmayor]

12. It's about to bloom

I think the system has long had a name, mentioned by some but never taken seriously by the powerful people on the idiot box. It's Fascism in the FDR sense of the word. Since the end of WWII, those on the right have been putting down the groundwork and propaganda to bring this about; as in wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.

[malthaussen]

13. He's being disingenuous.

Last edited Sun Aug 2, 2015, 12:38 PM - Edit history (1)

We have a name for what he sees "emerging." It is "fascism."

-- Mal

[bemildred]

15. +1. Well known, it is. nt

[Uncle Joe]

16. I don't believe we're there yet, we're at the crossroads waiting for the devil

the election in 2016 will determine whether we've taken his deal or not.

It all depends on who comes to power and if they have enough conscious, discipline, willpower and wisdom to reverse course.

However it will definitely be an uphill fight, the devil is known for his enticing pacts.

--Joe