or:  “A Comprehensive Manifesto on American Political Life”

It’s true that Democrats and Republicans are little more than two feuding factions of the same corporatist political establishment.  But there could be actual differences between them, inasmuch as they aspire to inflict slightly different kinds of grievous damage on society.  Both parties claim to champion “ordinary man” and accuse the other of elitism (a bit truer, obviously, in one case than in the other).  The constant, endless sniping back and forth between Democrats and Republicans (or “liberals” and “conservatives,” as they are called by those with a taste for trendy euphemistic language), while it most assuredly is not about the things we are told it is about (e.g. a conflict between elitism and populism), must ultimately be about … something or other (?).

To some degree, the two parties are certainly “in cahoots” with one another — as both parties adore the image of being locked in bitter struggle with the other.  (A kind of yin-yang symbiosis, as it were.)  The dumb struggle furnishes robust spectacle to the public; and encourages “ordinary man” (l’homme ordinaire, so to speak) to choose a side and then squander his energy and time gushing vitriol upon the opposing side … denouncing them as “agents Goldsteiniens” or dumbasses etc.  In short, the “conservative”/“liberal” duality is merely a distraction, a device to get the public involved in “straw issues” and all manner of vacuous controversy … and so prevent the really crucial issues from ever coming up.  It generates the illusion of vibrant, contentious, democratic debate; whereas in reality the discourse could hardly be more boxed-in by the forces of indoctrination and mind control.  But I do think there is something at stake.

As simplistic as it may sound, I think the core difference is, the Democrats want the corporatist agenda to triumph, along with some concessions to the tolerable functioning and survival of “ordinary man”; whilst the Republicans are prepared, quite simply, to steamroll the country into a fun playground of the hyper-rich, imposed atop a barren landscape of bad education, low-wage unskilled jobs, decent health care facilities that no one can fucking pay for, and flashy new Ford models – fresh off the Chinese assembly line and accruing much “gelt” in the coffers of high-level auto company executives.  The Republicans’ only concern with “ordinary man” is that he remain thoroughly enough indoctrinated, so that he will never rise up in any substantive way and thereby inconvenience the Republicans’ stranglehold and their grand plan to rape America.

During my long, protracted, and horrendously-hellish engagements with political AM radio, I have developed at least one trusty, unfailing guiding principle:  To wit:  Whatever is being asserted about so-called “liberals” or “liberalism,” is in actuality the rightwing describing itself, i.e. projecting their own uncomfortable semi-conscious self-realizations onto “the other,” “the villains.”  And when you think about some of their more hysterical declamations regarding “the left,” and translate them into a confession of their own real intent … one shivers in the chill, dank, autumnal breeze.

To give just one brief, simple, accessible example of this phenomenon:  These “commentators” could hardly be presenting a more succinct capsule-description of the type of really egregious scenario they themselves are so hellbent to bring to fruition, when they claim that Obama [a] represents something *radically different* from anything we’ve ever known before, and [b] also represents something *terribly destructive* to the foundations of the republic.  A fine summary of GW Bush … and, in all probability, of the next Republican president we get foisted with.

In the gigantic, neverending, and fabulously-tiresome propaganda war between the two corporatist factions, the Democrats seem to have an extraordinary knack for failing to ever say much of anything that cannot be instantaneously chopped to shreds by rightwing pundits.  By contrast, rightwing propaganda, by virtue of its moronic simplicity (its tendency to repeat, over and over, three or four extremely jejune, threadbare notions), has this amazing ability to “stick” in the popular mind.

The Democrats’ problem is their particular brand of propagandization is just too closely intermeshed with an actual constraining reality of some legitimate complexity – as opposed to the far-more-accessible simpleminded fantasyland of the Republicans.  This restricts the Democrats (most inconveniently!) from disseminating their message in the full gamut of mad, phantasmagoric textures-&-tones available to Republicans.  Stated differently, the Democrats’ narratives are “boring;” they talk too much about “real stuff,” e.g. the gnarled complexities of health care overhaul.  They err in tending toward the reflective and the reality-based.  (And insofar as Democratic politicians sometimes give great speeches and promise the possibility of great things to come, they are apparently far too complicit with the corporatist agenda to actually ever deliver any of it.)

To the contrary, you are more appealing, and garner more support, if you are bombastic and in loo-loo land, e.g. haranguing vociferously about death panels, the radical socialization of society, Jeffersonian democracy in the Middle East, the vile traitors amidst us who lack sufficient spine to carry out “the mission” etc.  Stated yet differently, when it comes to persuading hearts and minds, the “sound byte culture” massively favors some doofus’s verbal farting over a considered explanation that takes longer than five seconds.

That is why our society will just keep getting stupider, as more and more people slowly fall away from any point of contact with identifiable reality and jump on-board the bandwagon of collective masturbatory fantasties about “Naughty Li’l Goldstein” … until one day the whole country will finally crawl up its own asshole and wink out of existence.  Obviously the fact that I would write this means I hate America.  (PS The prior sentence was sarcastic, in case that might be unclear to somebody.)