The New York Times Wouldn’t Take My Comment (for twelve hours).

As I wrote on Paul Krugman’s column today submitted at 11:40 p.m. EST, (I will try and recreate the gist since comments now disappear as soon as they are sent:

I have to agree with you regarding the Republican candidates, but the voters themselves are somewhat smarter than you give them credit for. That’s always been one of the failings, though, of the academic left, which is why it has proven so effective for Fox News and the G.O.P. to accuse the ya’ll of Elitism. The Dems have had a problem for years connecting with the rank and file, ever since the draft dodgers tried to recruit them against the war, in which they had already served with honor, so the so-called New Left college boys wouldn’t have to go and fight. Now, some of those New Left college boys are Conservative chicken hawks today.

Back in the days when I used to consult for Democratic candidates, we would visit union halls and listen to the aspirants for public office trying to connect with people, unaware they were talking down, but you could tell the members knew it. They’d be sitting on their hands. What we the people in this country want is candidates who will speak to us honestly about the country’s future in terms that we can understand and that take account of us, but we also want to feel those words are backed by a real commitment to us, and when candidates strain to make that connection, we recognize them for what they are, and they have no future in politics. There is nothing wrong at all with Kansas. The people there just don’t like fat cats dressed in a poor man’s suit.

With the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, the Dems are showing their true colors. The fact that they and the G.O.P are just a good cop/bad cop act in what Sheldon Wolin calls an inverted totalitarian state could not be more apparent. We’ve been fighting this phony war on terror now for eight long years, with bipartisan support, and a war on the poor for forty years. That’s all over but the shootings, and we didn’t have a policy of assassination by executive fiat until the Occupier movement took hold, so perhaps the two are connected, somehow.

Over the past 40 years, we’ve permitted the .01 percent to abscond with the nation’s economic surplus, to the benefit of no one but themselves. They have enough money between them not only to pay off the national debt, but to live quite comfortably afterwards. They fancy themselves as job creators, and believe they should go through life and death totally tax free. So please tell us, job creators, where are all those jobs you’ve created? Perhaps you refer to those lucky few building your palaces, aeroplanes and yachts for single digit multiples of the hourly minimum wage.

So along comes Occupy Wall Street saying we should raise your taxes and end your casino gambling habits and we get this Defense Authorization permitting the assassination of anyone the executive branch deems to be a terrorist threat. Are they saying that National Security is equivalent to the letting the Plutocrats privatize the nation’s surplus, and anyone who advocates taxing it away will be branded a terrorist and shot?

What kind of people will we be when permit that to happen?

L’Etat ces moi, it was famously said. When the plutocrats become the state, and the state becomes the enemy of the nation, it is time for the nation to obliterate the state.

  • http://dennisloo.com Dr. Dennis Loo

    Hi Tim:

    Agree with your expose of the Democrats. Obama’s assassination orders, however, were issued before the Occupy Movement so the latter did not trigger the former. That’s one of the reasons I argue in my book that neoliberalism brings with it a certain perverse and odious logic and that both ruling parties in this country (and elsewhere in the world, including places where they really have social democratic parties) have adopted public order policies.

    • http://bonalibro.us Bonalibro

      I am aware that  the executive claims the right in pursuing the War on Terror, but assassination was made illegal by an act of Congress years ago. Now we have a bipartisan defense bill that specifically authorizes political assassination by the executive branch, and against our own citizens. Is that not a momentous change?

  • http://bonalibro.us Bonalibro

    They finally did take it. The nicer version is here. 

    Much as I agree with you regarding the Republican candidates, the base is not as stupid as you think if it hasn’t been gulled by this field. I remember campaigning in union halls with some of the Democrats I worked for, back in my consulting days. The Dems had just as hard a time appealing to the rank and file. Mostly, the members felt that they were being talked down to, and they didn’t like it, which largely explains why Fox news is able to appeal to people with its anti-intellectual elite message. 

    What working people want to hear are solutions to the nation’s problems that not only make sense to them and take them into account, but sound like they come from people who have a genuine commitment to them. Unfortunately, today’s Democrats, by and large, being from the 1% themselves, can’t demonstrate that commitment any better than their rivals. 

    Now, with the advent of McCain/Levin, it would seem that both parties have either lost their minds or simply shown their true stripes. As a recent addition to the various bi-partisan War on Terror bills, that were insane enough to begin with, one presumes it responds to the Occupy movement, and is intended to terrorize the 99% into quietly accepting their reduced status in our Plutocratic society. If those who represent a political threat to the wealthy are terminated as terrorists, then who are we? 

    When the Executive on its own can decide who is an enemy of the state, it becomes the enemy of the nation.