- Banned
- #1
TO CONCEIVE AND TO GIVE BIRTH TO A NEW PARTY
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Published on Tuesday, November 6, 2012 by
"We the People, and the New American Civil War
<!-- $authors is created within profiles/openpublishdroplits/modules/cd/theme_helpers/node-views_article.tpl.php -->
by Robert Reich
'The vitriol is worse is worse than I ever recall. Worse than the Palin-induced smarmy 2008. Worse than the swift-boat lies of 2004. Worse, even, than the anything-goes craziness of 2000 and its ensuing bitterness.
Its almost a civil war. I know families in which close relatives are no longer speaking. A dating service says Democrats wont even consider going out with Republicans, and vice-versa. My email and twitter feeds contain messages from strangers I wouldnt share with my granddaughter.
***
***the degree of venom were experiencing has deeper roots.
The nation is becoming browner and blacker. Most children born in California are now minorities. In a few years America as a whole will be a majority of minorities. Meanwhile, women have been gaining economic power. Their median wage hasnt yet caught up with men, but its getting close. And with more women getting college degrees than men, their pay will surely exceed male pay in a few years. At the same time, men without college degrees continue to lose economic ground. Adjusted for inflation, their median wage is lower than it was three decades ago.
In other words, white working-class men have been on the losing end of a huge demographic and economic shift. Thats made them a tinder-box of frustration and anger eagerly ignited by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and other pedlars of petulance, including an increasing number of Republicans who have gained political power by fanning the flames.
That hate-mongering and attendant scapegoating of immigrants, blacks, gays, women seeking abortions, our government itself has legitimized some vitriol and scapegoating on the left as well. I detest what the Koch Brothers, Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, Rupert Murdock, and Paul Ryan are doing, and I hate their politics. But in this heated environment I sometimes have to remind myself I dont hate them personally.
***"
=====================================================================
I am old enough to have vivid memories of the '29 depression
that include not just hungry but also starving people,
and not just deprived children but also children suffering from rickets, pellagra and granulated eyelids,
many of whom had no shoes
and some of whom walked to school barefoot in warm weather
and in boots made of inner tubes in the cold.
Had it not been for the Roosevelt New Deal we might have turned upon ourselves and destroyed each other and the country as well.
Today's Americans will act to create some minor and incomplete changes before that happens. But without a plan and a party to support and to stand for that plan
chaos will reign for two or three generations before order will prevail again.
We must form a new, progressive, plan-based third party,
and demonstrating and occupying are but first steps on the road leading to the creation of such a party.
But where are those who could and who would create the plan,
and where are those who would have the understanding and the desire and the will to put the plan to the test?
And if we had a good and politically viable plan --- and a third party,
what could we do to prevent those controllers of the democrat-republican partyy
from coopting our third party? Party cards for party members? I think so.
SHOCKLEY
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Published on Tuesday, November 6, 2012 by
"We the People, and the New American Civil War
<!-- $authors is created within profiles/openpublishdroplits/modules/cd/theme_helpers/node-views_article.tpl.php -->
by Robert Reich
'The vitriol is worse is worse than I ever recall. Worse than the Palin-induced smarmy 2008. Worse than the swift-boat lies of 2004. Worse, even, than the anything-goes craziness of 2000 and its ensuing bitterness.
Its almost a civil war. I know families in which close relatives are no longer speaking. A dating service says Democrats wont even consider going out with Republicans, and vice-versa. My email and twitter feeds contain messages from strangers I wouldnt share with my granddaughter.
***
***the degree of venom were experiencing has deeper roots.
The nation is becoming browner and blacker. Most children born in California are now minorities. In a few years America as a whole will be a majority of minorities. Meanwhile, women have been gaining economic power. Their median wage hasnt yet caught up with men, but its getting close. And with more women getting college degrees than men, their pay will surely exceed male pay in a few years. At the same time, men without college degrees continue to lose economic ground. Adjusted for inflation, their median wage is lower than it was three decades ago.
In other words, white working-class men have been on the losing end of a huge demographic and economic shift. Thats made them a tinder-box of frustration and anger eagerly ignited by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and other pedlars of petulance, including an increasing number of Republicans who have gained political power by fanning the flames.
That hate-mongering and attendant scapegoating of immigrants, blacks, gays, women seeking abortions, our government itself has legitimized some vitriol and scapegoating on the left as well. I detest what the Koch Brothers, Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, Rupert Murdock, and Paul Ryan are doing, and I hate their politics. But in this heated environment I sometimes have to remind myself I dont hate them personally.
***"
=====================================================================
I am old enough to have vivid memories of the '29 depression
that include not just hungry but also starving people,
and not just deprived children but also children suffering from rickets, pellagra and granulated eyelids,
many of whom had no shoes
and some of whom walked to school barefoot in warm weather
and in boots made of inner tubes in the cold.
Had it not been for the Roosevelt New Deal we might have turned upon ourselves and destroyed each other and the country as well.
Today's Americans will act to create some minor and incomplete changes before that happens. But without a plan and a party to support and to stand for that plan
chaos will reign for two or three generations before order will prevail again.
We must form a new, progressive, plan-based third party,
and demonstrating and occupying are but first steps on the road leading to the creation of such a party.
But where are those who could and who would create the plan,
and where are those who would have the understanding and the desire and the will to put the plan to the test?
And if we had a good and politically viable plan --- and a third party,
what could we do to prevent those controllers of the democrat-republican partyy
from coopting our third party? Party cards for party members? I think so.
SHOCKLEY
