Thursday, November 4, 2010

Must You Learn From Your Makers How to Die?


Well, just in case professional Democrats didn't beat all the damn out of me before the election, they've already begun beating what's left out of me in the 48 hours since. Evan Bayh lectures me on political realities. Evan Bayh and I probably agree on the construction and mechanics of political realities, even agree on the logic behind the motives for the design while disagreeing wholly not on those motives but on the efficacy of the plan. I think we can stretch this descent into Serbia to thirty years if we just treat the serfs fairer, he thinks we can stretch this descent into Serbia forever by reaming more serfs faster while broadcasting them constant cracker-chow celebrating Serbia as the greatest country ever.

Here is a political reality - Barack Obama will win reelection in 2012. I've bet pints at every stop on my personal train from Obamagasm to Obamalame, from Obamapology to Obamapostasy, I bet pints now.

This has been the plan all along, the re-Clinton Presidency, those eight years of center-right neoliberalism Corporate adored that's now hallowed by dopey ticket-punchers and trumpeted by professional Democrats as a golden age of Liberalism. There will be another Republican president, just in 2016. There's too much pre-looting structural damage the Democrats can do before Corporate calls in Republicans to daisycut another two decades of earned pensions of America's serfs.

UPDATE!  Just out at 11:15 AM, NYRB, professional Democrat Mark Lilla says:
The one Democrat to get it, at least in his 2.0 version, was Bill Clinton. He took the lesson from the defeat of his health care initiative and the thumping he took in midterm elections and changed course. Most importantly, he managed to get a Democratic version of welfare reform passed, which symbolically was very important for independent voters. I worry that the Obama election has put the limousine back in American liberalism and has made the Democrats forget the lessons of the Clinton years. At the moment they seem unreconciled to the fact that in democratic societies you go into elections with the nation you have, not the nation you’d wish for. 
Shazam!



1945: THE DEATH OF THE GODS

Randall Jarrell

In peace tomorrow, when your slack hands weigh
Upon the causes; when the ores are rust
And the oil laked under the mandates
Has puffed from the turbines; when the ash of life
Is earth that has forgotten the first human sun
Your wisdom found: O bringers of the fire,
When you have shipped our bones home from the bases
to those who think of us, not as we were
(Defiled, annihilated - the forgotten vessels
Of the wrath that formed us: of the murderous
Dull will that worked out its commandment, death
For the disobedient and for us, obedient) -
When you have seen grief wither, death forgotten,
And dread and love, the witnesses of men,
Swallowed up in victory: you who determine
Men's last obedience, yourselves determined
In the first unjudged obedience of greed
And senseless power: you eternal States
Beneath whose shadows men have found the stars
And graves of men: O warring Deities,
Tomorrow when the rockets rise like stars
And earth in blazing with a thousand suns
That set up there within your realms a realm
Whose laws are ecumenical, whose life
Exacts from men a prior obedience -
Must you learn from your makers how to die?

9 comments:

  1. "There's too much pre-looting structural damage the Democrats can do before Corporate calls in Republicans to daisycut another two decades of earned pensions of America's serfs."

    Christ. I can stop blogging now. Seriously pithy awesome.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh, that's cold. But fine, I don't have the legal resources to combat the balance of the evidence. Guilty.

    While Jack's right and it's a very good turn of phrase, I maintain that y'all seriously overestimate the competence of corporate America. But I'll concede that I probably overestimate the need for corporate America to be competent...

    ReplyDelete
  3. If you judge competence by the actor's aims and not the observer's aims, you'll go farther -- and with a more accurate shot too.

    Of course the best indicator of any man or woman's intentions is his/her action. In all cases.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Corporate doesn't have to be good with no opposition. Corporate also gets to pick the battles; when and where they are fought and also how they will be recorded.

    Put me in charge of Wimbeldon and I am 100% sure you will see my Mom's cats crowned champions. No they can't play tennis.

    ReplyDelete
  5. To use another sports analogy just 'cause Charles likes 'em so much, heh, it's when the Yanks fuck up by giving giant contracts to the AJ Burnetts of the world. Easily fixed, plenty Michael Kays where that came from.

    ReplyDelete
  6. All three branches of Government will be controlled by Republicans after 2012. I'll bet a pint on that.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Well, that's a win-win for us if a lose-lose for the country.

    If you're right, the ponzi-scheme is falling faster than I think it is.

    ReplyDelete
  8. And oh, the strongest weapon Corporate holds over serfs' heads *is* Corporate's incompetence.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Just the other day I found your blog through Stump lane (I think).

    And now the linky love in a post that includes Blank Generation and the gang of Four. I may be swooning over here.

    In other words, thanks.

    ReplyDelete