On Politics

There are two ways to look at political parties in America today. You can take the perspective of ideology, where each party consists of a calculable amount of bodies or votes that are made up of systems of organs, organs, atoms, quarks, etc. In this view you can say that the democrats lean towards communism and the republicans towards fascism. However anyone who thinks this accurately describes our current political world is an idiot. This is because of the other aspect of the polis that have brains. Due to this the actual members of the parties look completely different from what their ideologies say. For instance Bill Clinton gutted the welfare system as we know it, and though he gave a speech that rhetorically praised our great welfare state, the consequences were that the system was diminished. On the other hand republicans tend to support corporate subsidies and tax breaks, which despite their insistent rhetorical stance that 'big government' is the enemy, considerably grows the government and the reach that it has. Not to say that democrats do not support these subsidies. In fact the parties are not acting in opposition to their philosophies, but rather acting in the tradition that all parties maintain. A tradition of anti-radical change. Obama may not have used our military machine in the same way Bush did, nor did he however break from the usual pattern of violence when it comes to US foreign policy. The truth points to an image of America as an imperialist nation that supports corporate welfare or corporate socialism. The popular image is that we are a country where each election is a war between those who want to expand our welfare state in terms of supporting the poor versus those who support everyman pulling themselves up by their own boot straps. That is not what history says at all, though it is not completely off. It just the opposite in fact. This does not mean that I support Romney over Obama by any means. Even if there is not much radical change, the pendulum has been slowly but surely moving toward a more fascist and less communist state. Supporting the Democratic party will at very least slightly retard that trend. Only slightly though. I believe in the tactic of counting the bodies and using those numbers to win elections as opposed to what will be known in Ohio as the John Housted method after 2012. That is restricting the number of people who can vote with the assumption that the people who have the hardest time showing up to the polls are the urban poor ie black people ie Democrats. What is significant in the numbers game is remembering that each of those bodies has a brain which makes them less predictable. There is true power in voting. It is the working poor's only line of defense against the wealthy. But that voting power only works in organized and disciplined blocks of votes. Theoretically then it is possible that a group who supports radical transitions and change can find power, and there is nothing that minority opposition can do about it. This however has not really happened in a meaningful enough way that people in general are convinced that their vote really matters. There are some examples however, like medical marijuana in different states, and in a much more meaningful way during Reconstruction after the Civil War. At that time there was a real reform party option that did not resemble either of our major parties today, and could have actually benefited the working poor of America for the first and only time ever. It was crushed, as was the glimmer of hope in the Green Party before the Florida election debacle and the rise of W. Still it is worth remembering and emulating or using as inspiration for a real reform party for real people. Real bodies and real brains together. My last comment on this would be...look to Brazil?
by
Chris 'Cdub' Wood