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People historically have looked for a king to rule them, a king they
can worship and vicariously live through to provide meaning to their
otherwise pathetic existential-terror-ridden lives. The Framers
recognized this and thus attempted to create a form of government in
which the assembly of the people's numerous representatives held the
bulk of the power and the reins of government. The natural
degenerative processes set in immediately leading ultimately to the
necrotic oligarchy that passes for a constitutional government and
holds the entralled populace captive.<br>
<br>
At the end of The Hobbit there is great war between two partisan
factions. Suddenly the warring factions realize they are both
threatened by the same sinister enemy, and join their forces
(reluctantly) to fight and crush (for awhile anyway) that enemy. The
Left/Right paradigm is something of the same thing. Glen Ford is sure
what Left and Right mean. Left is good, Right is evil. The knee-jerk
conservatives are afflicted with the same disease. Melanie Safka said
catching the same disease is sufficient grounds for cooperation.<br>
<br>
As long as the Orcs of the smug (smaug) ruling class can keep the
peasants from uniting, the Orcs will have the upper hand.<br>
<br>
"Only a massed people can defeat massed capital."<br>
<br>
Any half-massed effort will just be half-assed. <br>
<br>
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, <br>
is to unite the warring factions and <br>
bring down the oligarchy.<br>
<br>
If you or any of your IM force are killed or neutralized in their
struggle -- hey dude, tough noogies. <br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 8/28/2010 8:00 AM, David Johnson wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:006301cb4644$1637fec0$6501a8c0@yourze8cxvr8tt"
type="cite">
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Original Message -----
<div
style="background: rgb(228, 228, 228) none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;"><b>From:</b>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" title="marshall.arnold@gmail.com"
href="mailto:marshall.arnold@gmail.com">Marshall Arnold</a> </div>
<div><b>To:</b> <a moz-do-not-send="true" title="dlj725@hughes.net"
href="mailto:dlj725@hughes.net">David Johnson</a> ; <a
moz-do-not-send="true" title="1999wildcat@gmail.com"
href="mailto:1999wildcat@gmail.com">John Reimann</a> </div>
<div><b>Sent:</b> Friday, August 27, 2010 12:09 AM</div>
<div><b>Subject:</b> Glen Ford's Excellent Rant</div>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div
style="margin: 15px 0pt 0pt; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic;">Published
on Wednesday, August 25, 2010 by Black Agenda Report</div>
<div class="print-title">We Are Cornered: There's No Way Out Without
a Fight</div>
<div id="node-header">
<p class="author">by Glen Ford</p>
</div>
<p>There is no cavalry coming over the ridge to save the people from
massed capital. Certainly not the Democrats, whose self-caged left wing
now finds its marginalized encampments under lockdown by their own
president's hostile patrols, while the GOP and its Tea Party irregulars
howl from the circling darkness. That's what happens when progressives
maneuver themselves onto the same side of the battlefield as Goldman
Sachs, as they did with abandon in 2007-08, deliriously fighting their
way into a cul-de-sac in which they are now surrounded.</p>
<p>The leftish brigades rallied to a commander who styled himself an
incarnation of Abraham Lincoln, but turned out to be a General George
McClellan, the Union's first commander of the Army of the Potomac.
McClellan was great at rousing the troops and putting his army on
parade, but constantly overestimated his Confederate adversaries and,
in Lincoln's final estimation, refused to fight. The political roots of
his reluctance to crush the Confederacy became clear after his
dismissal when, in 1864, he challenged Lincoln on the Democratic
"peace" party's ticket. McClellan never really wanted to win the war,
or, at the very least, saw victory in a very different way than Lincoln
and Ulysses S. Grant.</p>
<p>It has long been clear that Barack Obama's idea of victory
required decisively defeating the Left of his own party. Everyone to
his left is to be neutralized, while those to his right rate an open
hand and endless concessions, the scenario from the very start of his
health care "negotiations" with the drug and insurance industries.
Victory in the racial arena means an end to race agitation, a Black
stand-down, which remains largely in place. Success in war, not pursuit
of peace, is his goal, one that will surely elude him, but not for lack
of trying.</p>
<p>Obama and finance capital began an early, thoroughly vetted, and
white hot love affair that was anchored in mutual contempt for those
who would challenge the rule of money. He has delivered the highest
return on corporate campaign investment in the history of bourgeois
democracy, allowing Wall Street to pocket at least $12 <i>trillion</i>
in return for contributions of less than $1 million per investment
house. (Goldman Sachs was top giver, at <u><a moz-do-not-send="true"
class="external"
href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=n00009638"
target="_blank">$994,795</a> <span class="print-footnote">[1]</span></u>.)
Obama was BP's biggest political campaign recipient: <u><a
moz-do-not-send="true" class="external"
href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/05/05/bp.lobbying/index.html"
target="_blank">$71,000</a> <span class="print-footnote">[2]</span></u>,
an investment that boosted the corporation's value by billions --
albeit temporarily -- when the president opened up offshore drilling in
the Gulf of Mexico.</p>
<p>Obviously, Goldman Sachs and BP considered Obama a "greater good,"
in terms of their interests, than John McCain. And they made out like
bandits, confirming their assessment of Obama's immense value to their
side in the class war. The question is, how in the hell did lefties
conclude that Big Capital's and Big Oil's "greater good" candidate was
also the progressive side's fountain of Hope -- or even a "lesser evil"
-- in 2008? Both camps placed their bets on Obama, but only one side
could possibly win. </p>
<p>It is the Left that wound up trapped in the cul-de-sac, with every
major item on its 2008 political wish list betrayed, sidetracked,
mangled or spat upon by Obama and his friends -- although, to be fair
to the Devil, the Left had often simply imagined they had Obama's ear
or support when such was not even remotely true. On war, for example.</p>
<p>Most devastatingly, Obama and his <i>Democratic</i> legislative
allies have successfully shielded their Wall Street masters from
anything worthy of the name financial reform. This means finance
capital and its "shadow," derivatives-based economy (nominally, ten
times bigger than the "real" global economy) remain beyond the reach of
meaningful public intervention by conventional methods. With the air
knocked out of mainstream reformers' bony chests, Wall Street is poised
for a Great Offensive against the political and social infrastructure
of the United States. </p>
<p>Producing nothing of real value, fatally hooked on ever-mounting
rates of return, simultaneously divorced from and a parasite on the
"real" economy, and with the executive and legislative branches in
their pockets, the Lords of Capital are set to devour the entirety of
the public sector -- while forcing the public to finance the feast. The
rallying cry is "austerity," but the motivation is not, as <i>New York
Times</i> columnist Paul Krugman maintains, ideological. Rather, it is
hunger.</p>
<p>Finance capital is, at this stage of the system's decline,
incapable of reproducing itself through productive investment, and so
must feed on existing producers or on the State. Since Wall Street over
the decades has already broken up, consumed and exported much of the
U.S. productive economy, that leaves the State and all of its parts.
Far from acting as a brake on his vampire friends, Obama leads the
charge on corporate hijacking of public education, and signaled in
January 2009 that all elements of the safety net, including Social
Security, should be "on the table" -- which can only mean some form of
privatization. </p>
<p>The pace of finance capital deterioration quickens, accelerating
the timetable of the Right's offensive. As the hunger grows, Wall
Street's servants become more aggressive and demanding, and there is
nothing in the Democratic Party, as presently constituted, to stop them.</p>
<p>One truth remains: only a massed people can defeat massed capital.
If the American Left is capable of bearing that in mind in the critical
times ahead, it might just escape the cul-de-sac and make some modest
contribution to the world.</p>
<div class="copyright-info">© 2010 Black Agenda Report</div>
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