|
The two parties pretty much have a stranglehold on our political system. The economics of these parties are important. The Republican party has an immense problem because the center of the Republican party, it's organizational and its financial core is wealthy people and big companies. And the problem right away is that is a small number of people. Maybe, a million or two million. We have a population of 330 million and whatever that number is very small so they're not going to be able to control politics or to be a political force if only what they rely on us is themselves. There's not enough of them not even close. So in order for the Republican party to function, to be a political force, to do what it does in this culture it has to find a way to get other people aligned with it. There is a famous Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, who had a whole theory about how the people in charge have to take over, control things, in his language achieve hegemony, a control of the whole society by building a hegemonic block he called it. He was analyzing Italian society but he understood it applied everywhere. So the rich in the United States corporations and wealthy people who are the core of the Republican party who finance and make it possible they have to build a block. They have to get large groups of people to see themselves as aligned with them. First they have been building and they have been very successful for at least half an century in building an alliance with the military. That's very, very important. We have two or three million people who directly or indirectly relate to the military sometimes more in periods of warfare. That's a lot of votes. Millions of voters. They can work out a deal. We as a party, the Republicans, we will be generous to a fault. We'll fund anything. You have a new aircraft carrier? We'll take six. You put us in political office and we will make the military happy. You want a new aircraft? We'll get you one. You want to have bases all over we'll get you those we'll do it. We ask only for two things in return. One: you vote for us. The majority of the military votes for Republicans and has for decades but the second thing is we would like you to take the money we so generously give to you and pay us way higher prices for what we sell to you then you could ever have to pay if you ever bought anywhere else. That's an unending scandal. We will fund you and you overpay us and we'll take the over payment you give us and fund you with it. Scratching each others back. That has worked really well. There are a large number of Americans for whom it is extremely important that as they drive into town in their pickup truck on a little rack in the back window behind them there are guns lots of them. And the republicans say this is wonderful. You should have these guns. You should have all kinds of guns. You should have them on your body when you go to the store because then the large horde seeking to separate you from your money will think twice because you may shoot them. So the Republicans celebrate the gun carriers. The Republicans announce that they love churches. Oh boy do they love Churches. Because have ambivalent feelings about churches. This is an important constituency for the Republicans. Another group is, for a lack of a better term  Libertarians . People who have decided that the real evil in the world is the government. Oh boy do they hate the government. If we could just get the government out wow would we be happy. The government is terrible. They are not so good at explaining why the government is so terrible. It's self evident. Why? Because that's what governments are. It's obvious.So the Republicans have built powerful alliances with religious folks of all kinds, with gun advocates, with the military, and racists of all kinds, and another group for whom immigration is the great evil in the world. There is lots of them. They have to build these alliances. Because they got a lot problems the Republicans, this group of big businesses and the rich. Little business of which there are many more than big ones. Big ones are the big powerful but for every big one there is five thousand little ones and little ones are constantly discovering that the big ones are their enemy. The big ones control the prices that the little ones have to pay if they're going to survive. The big ones can decide at a certain moment to go into a business wiping out the little ones who try to survive. So there is lots of tension. So the republicans realize we need all these little businesses. We will denounce government for making life hard for little businesses and we'll denounce unions because they threaten little business and that'll show the little businesses that we are their buddy even though they know we are often their enemy. This is a tension. And the religious people are a little tense too because the religious people listen to those leaders talk about the importance of religion and then look at how they live and realize they are not practicing what they preach. In fact they are doing everything that is denounced in the church and more then everybody else and they seem to playing us religious folks for fools. Oh, that can hurt. There is a constant tension. And then there are the gun tooters, and the racists who also kind of know somewhere and suspect that the reason the government is such a hateful thing for them is because they don't control the government which leads to the thought who does and that can take you right back to the big business and the rich. Which means the very people the big business and the rich have to hold in are always edgy and not so sure. So it is a very difficult thing for the Republicans to hold on to the mass of people to keep these alliances with subsections of them from dissolving on them. The core of the Democratic party is the same thing: big business and wealthy people. Different groups of them but basically big businesses and wealthy people. If you are ever in doubt go look up any of the internet sources of the funding of the two big parties and you'll see very quickly how dependent they are, both of them, on a relatively very small part of our population that funds them and provides them with all of their basic needs of function. The Democrats therefor have the same problem: how do you get a mass of people? The Democrats however go to a different group of folks. First of all the Democrats work very hard to convince poor people at least the poor people that vote that they are somehow their friend . We are the friend of the poor people. We are the friend of union members. We are the friend of the unions. We are the friend of minorities, ethnic minorities, racial minorities. We're the friend of women, particularly the Democrats are focusing on single women, most women being single these days. That's a big voting block and they did very well. No way that Biden would have won without the vote of single women it was wildly lopsided in their favor.Academics, big support among academics, school teachers at all levels who of course let that leak in the class room making young people tilt. LGBTQ+ people. Ecologically minded folks. The Democrats go after all of them. But they also have terrible trouble because the very people they claim to be for look at them and say "Ugh, what are you doing for me?" If you are a union member for example when Obama ran, and I don't want to pick on Obama because he's no different from all the other presidents but that's the point he isn't any different. When Obama came in the unions said we want one thing from you we want the dues check off business to be adjusted so that it'll be a little easier for us to gather the signatures for a majority of the workers at a place we want to organize and if we sign these cards then we can get an election for a union. Card check that was what is was called. That's what they wanted and Obama promised it to them when he was running for office in 2008. He gets into office in 2008. He gets re-elected in 2012. It's as if it never happened. He didn't get that the bill, it was never put through *poof* it's gone. So the unions keep supporting the Democratic party because they are convinced that the Republicans would be worse for them. Probably true. But they don't get anything and that leads to a lot of bitterness, resentment, and that sits there and that makes that alliance weaker and weaker. Poor people, it's not good to be poor in case you hadn't noticed. We kind of know that. The Democratic party promise all kinds of things to poor people but the delivery is lets call it spotty . That makes poor people think voting is a waste of time. Minorities the same thing, immigrants the same thing, academics the same thing, women the same thing.The Democratic party sometimes have an easier time because they can always point to the Republicans and that so terrifies large numbers of people they need an alliance with that they can hold them but it's not because people are enthusiastic about the Democratic party it's this endless lesser of two evils game that they play and that's not a very secure way. Beneath the veneer of two big powerful parties is a very fragile, very insecure, very wobbly structure. They are not the big power houses they would have us all believe. They are very shaky. Here is where the shakiness could get interesting suppose the mass of people that the Republicans have drawn in to a shaky alliance and the mass of the Democratic party that those leaders have drawn in suppose they all more or less at the same time began to say "Wait a minute. There is another option. We don't have to be patsies for the Republicans or for the Democrats. Suppose we all got together and supported another party.". Not only would that party be very powerful but the Republicans and Democrats would be no match for it at all. They would be reduced to what they are: the rich and the corporate leaders. Don't think that is some kind of a pie in the sky. Don't think that that is impossible. Why not? Jon Pod Van Damm fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Dec 20, 2021 |
#
¿
Dec 6, 2021 06:38
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 20:18 |
|