Captain_Cavman said:
Has this changed over time? I'm not a great student of US politics but the turn over of Senators seems to be similar to what it's been for the last 30 years.
Here in the UK too, the two main parties are following identical policies. The closer they become, the more hysterical is the screaming about the differences. In the end otherwise intelligent people are reduced to saying things like, "I don't trust them because they're Tories, Labour, or whatever."
My own theory is that politicians haven't any wriggle room in the current economic climate as we watch how 30+ years of exponential debt expansion in a debt based fiat money system unfolds.
But that's probably just me.
That's because in the post revolutionary, post-World War, Post-Cold War era, under the general affluence and easy access to a so called material well-being; the Western democracies have witnessed their political dialogues entirely formed around the preponderance that economic liberalism and the markets have held over the civilization. At least in regards to how that civilization has been conceived since the industrial revolution, as one in which a concept of "progress" is exclusively wrapped-up in and synonymous with economic growth. Thus everything is predicated upon the folly of eternal market growth, no matter what that may actually mean or cause down the line, because it has become their religion.
In short its all about the economy, the economy and nothing but the economy. This basically means that the entire political process has in our culture come to be pretty much centered upon the free-market system, on both sides of the ideological fence, for which any differences in worldview become decidedly marginal, or merely apparent, structural and used purely as a platform to try and win votes. In such a tight, centrist political construct, the only way to be successful
politically is to raise ones voice in ire over the petty little initiatives and rebuttals shouted from the other platform's pulpit, however unsubstantial the differences may have been from what you were just announcing, while being egged on and abetted by the corporate lobbyists. Thus the insight you provided in your last comments was spot-on.
While this may be pathetic and sad, such is how money, greed and corruption have reduced our democracy into a lugubrious and thoroughly tasteless spectacle. That's the truth. If anything Obama's presidency is a sobering exposition of this fact that despels all illusions, as well as a harsh reality check.
And it aint gonna get better before it gets much worse, I've thought.
In addition, this has, among the mainstream two-party centrist factions, obviously drawn them nearer and nearer together and essentially means having a regime with only one worldview: which is the economically liberal and conservative one. Especially because the politicians don't count and are in reality just the minions of a behind the scenes financial apparatus, which nobody votes for, but that entirely runs the show. This also means you no longer count and neither do I.
It has also gridlocked the system, which is why any effort toward effecting real and badly needed change form the left, is merely rhetorical and ultimately hopeless. Any chance at curtailing the voracious appetite of the financial apparatus, even when this means foisting gargantuan debt that was privately accumulated upon the public's shoulders, is impossible; as was evident when government bailed out Wall Street and the banks and then gave the bill to the tax payers. At the same time, though not at all surprisingly, government can't seem to scrap up the sums to finance even a minimum welfare that's becoming of any civilized and enlightened democratic society: public healthcare, schools and pensions. Because the real bosses fought a ruthless ideological war and won resoundingly.
The resounding victory that liberal capitalism had over socialism has meant that any sane and principled form of responsible economic planning and welfare went straight out the door. The establishment only prevaricates when it assures the masses that it is acting with any intent to push reforms through the legislation, or at least any useful reforms. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall nothing, in the way of an alternative, has of course been promoted, let alone is capable of resisting, or even calling into question, the most destructive tendencies of market fundamentalism. This while the world's population has been growing exponentially over the past 150 years, and while nature's resources have been depleted with equal multiplication during the same period. This means the societies of the world, unless a major cultural and political change occurs, will be condemned to always more brutal forms of competition and this will consequently restrict the access to good jobs and wealth to an ever restricted minority, not just in the West but globally.
Thus on the left we only get infirm and deceptive imposters, while on the right only the most fanatical and confident (always a most dangerous combination) of ideologues. This is why I don't subscribe to the thinking that left and right are basically two sides of the same coin, what the Italians call
qualunquismo, or that anyone in the political spectrum can be exchanged for any other, right or left it doesn't matter, since its all identical. For we are missing an entire category and do not merely have two parties behaving similarly if not identically in the final analysis.
Thus this would be true only if we did not live under the centrist regime. Left and right are not the same. It's only that in the centrist democracies of today, which are chiefly governed by the overbearing powers of economic liberalism and globalization, the former has quite simply merged into the latter's domain, has virtually become a non-entity in the way the socially progressive left used to be perceived. While the right has become ever more arrogant and extreme.
Though this may appear to have been an unquestionable good that is without reproach in getting us over the Cold War and making us decidedly richer (in the material, but I doubt very much in the spiritual sense), the future health of the planet and therefore human civilization at large may very well be ultimately faced with far more dire prospects and consequences as a result.
This is why we need more bold and visionary thinkers and planners, and not the string commanded puppets we have among the actual political classes towing the line, which seems to be a ship recklessly bent on a collision course nobody appears to have noticed nor even cares about. Though because of just how ingrained the corruption, greed and lack of any moral principle has become within our political establishment, makes any hope for change in the absence of a real and dramatic tragedy, not very likely, at least not soon. While there is a considerable public that frankly seems clueless about what's actually going on, or simply doesn't give a damn about and has either given up out of sheer forfeit, or else cynically sees as an opportunity to pursue their own base and selfish ends.
Okey Dokey.
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