Pissing in the Liberal Punchbowl Again

By Joe Bageant
(excerpt)


Americans take comfort in the spoonfed "pendulum" theory of politics. No matter that the pendulum smacks them in the goddamned head at either end of the swing, because supposedly, it achieves some democracy preserving balance. To my mind, it merely offers a different faux target for citizen discontent every four years, so the same powers behind the powers can continue to extract wealth and sucker the public into consumer confidence and the latest Wall Street Ponzi scheme, or fighting wars to obtain more wealth and to protect what the elites have already piled up. Yet American tolerance for this pendulum bullshit, for this set of fake choices between two powerful groups of political elites who are dancing in the Washington conga line, asshole to belly button pretending they are alternatives to each another, seems endless.

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Internationally speaking, the picture is no better. It's pretty doubtful anyone will publicly fess up to the fact that the whole damned world hates us, and that a recent poll found that just about everybody but the Japanese and the South Koreans consider us far more dangerous than Kim Il Sung's North Korean nuclear zoo. The soon-to-come investigations of Cheney and Rumsfeld may make jolly spectacle for the American public, even entertain the Europeans for a while, with its examination as to how our illegal invasion, complete destruction and occupation of a sovereign country was "mishandled" -- if the actions of a rogue nation can be said to be mishandled -- which will distract the citizenry for a while longer. But the Democratic Party will never challenge the militarism that has made war the resort of first option so acceptable to so many Americans. Cutting defense spending by half remains unthinkable, even though it would still leave us with one quarter of all the world's weapons and four fifths of the world's viable nuclear firepower. Despite that the savings would rebuild every school in then nation, or send every American child through college or technical school, or wipe out homelessness in one fell swoop, or pay for nationalized health care for all, (if the insurance company leeches are dumped in the process) or public transit.

[emphasis mine]

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