I think we're screwed until enough people wise up to the big picture

deutsey

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Sat Aug-06-11 05:38 PM
Original message

I think we're screwed until enough people wise up to the big picture

(This is a response I made in another thread earlier today...based on some of the responses, I decided to share as an OP).

What's the big picture?

It transcends the politics of the moment, which is where most of us who follow politics can't help but focus on. But so much of that is a stacked deck and it's stacked against most of us and what we value and what we need.

The big picture, imo, is the ancient struggle between the interests of the few versus the interests of the many.

Ancient Athens had an ongoing tension between democrats and oligarchs. Rome ousted kings, began a republic, but the struggle between the populares (sort of their version of liberal Democrats) and the optimares (conservative Republicans) finally tore it apart and the rule of emperors and wealthy families dominated.

This ancient struggle is what we have come to see today in terms of the right versus the left. These terms arose sometime after the French Revolution when those who supported aristocratic interests sat on the right side of the Parliament, and those who supported egalitarian progress sat on the left.

After the Industrial Revolution, America had its version of the left (socialists, unionists, anarchists, etc.) and the right (the robber barons, etc.) and the two sides literally fought each other in the ancient battle described above. In the '30s, the left prevailed after the Crash, but the battle continued. FDR alluded to it in his defiance of what he called "economic royalists." The much maligned '60s is the last time, imo, that there was a clearly defined outbreak of this battle between the left and right.

Since then, I think we've become bogged down in our modern superficial understanding of these terms and have forgotten their deeper roots. The right today is seen as red state types: Guns, God, Gays, and all that crap. The left is seen as blue state types: what that infamous anti-Dean commercial characterized as a "tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show."

These terms reduce the conflict down to lifestyles instead of between democrats (small "d") versus oligarchs; populares versus optimares; leftwing support of expanding wealth and power versus rightwing support of conserving aristocratic wealth and privilege.

On today's right and left (speaking of us in the trenches, here), we get caught up in personalities and in scoring points against opponents but, as far as I can tell, most of us are not seeing that this battle that goes back at least to Western Civilization's beginnings is still being waged on a larger level...and that the interests of "our side" (the democrats, the populares, the left...of common working people) are getting trampled in terms of that big picture, no matter how many victories or partial victories we score in the narrow and controlled focus of the politics of the moment.

The right's leadership has been very successful in obscuring the big picture ever since Reagan came along and duped a lot of "common" people into cheering on what are traditionally oligarchic/aristocratic interests.

I think until common working people in "red" and "blue" states realize together what's really at stake in the big picture, we will all continue being royally screwed.