Oh boy! There's yet worse news than the absurdist story of Democratic crybaby-ism and disintegration.
Here's some party-trumping gloom–today the Supreme Court appears to have turned over the government to the highest bidder in a real and direct way. This decision should worry all of us on the left, the right, the middle, and elsewhere because it seems to mean that corporations are no longer fettered in their ability to disseminate their political messages with their money.
Try competing with that by holding up your hand-drawn sign at a tea party. Hard to see how it will matter. We'll be the recipients of policy, not the drivers of it. Period, end of story. To embrace that as a good thing is to embrace a complete loss of political power, no matter your philosophy of governance.
From the New York Times last August about the case that came down today:
If the ban is struck down, corporations may soon be writing large checks to the same elected officials whom they are asking to give them bailouts or to remove health-and-safety regulations from their factories or to insert customized loopholes into the tax code.
Marcy Wheeler (and a quotation within the quotation):
Today’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC abolishes the previously settled distinction between corporate and individual expenditures in American elections and would appear to apply to state and local elections as well as Federal ones given that the Court recognizes such a First Amendment right. This is literally an earth shattering change in the lay of the land in campaign finance, and it will have ramifications in every way imaginable for the foreseeable future.
Quoting a very interested observer, Senator Russ Feingold, he of McCain-Feingold fame, John Nichols had this to say in The Nation:
…Says Feingold: “If they overturn a hundred years of laws, it means that corporations or unions can just open their treasuries (and) just completely buy up all the television time, and drown out everyone else’s voices.”
So that's exciting.
UPDATE:
More on this campaign finance idiocy from SCOTUS will have to follow when there aren't so many print stories to finish, but in the meantime it's well worth noting the statement on the matter from Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21, in which he quotes former Republican senator Chuck Hagel:
Chuck Hagel, the Nebraska Republican who retired from the Senate last year after serving two terms, said in an interview that if restrictions on corporate money were lifted, "the lobbyists and operators . . . would run wild." Reversing the law would magnify corporate power in society and "be an astounding blow against good government, responsible government," Hagel said. "We would debase the system, so we would get to the point where we couldn't govern ourselves."
ALSO:
When it comes to explaining current politics in a grander context than the wrestling match between the Dumb and Dumber Parties, one of the most informative books I've ever read is Prescott Webb's The Great Frontier. I had a teacher back at North Texas who was a strong proponent of Webb's primary idea that the frontier or lack thereof is a major driver of culture on every level, from the arts to politics and philosophy. It sounds like a modest idea, but it's a game-changer in some respects. The book is on my list of must-reads, of books that demand that readers exercise the gray matter in a big way to engage the author.
Webb ties the notion of the New World frontier to the flowering of the Renaissance in Europe, and to the development of a distinct American identity. He also gives compelling examples of what happens when a frontier gets thoroughly explored and its resources dwindle. The simple version is that a society turns inward, becomes more self-involved and calcified in its thinking (especially in religion and politics). That notion seemed to be a bit of a question mark back in the early '90s when I read it–after all, the 1960s had opened a massive breach in social conservatism, one which had continued at the social level despite the resurgence of conservative thought in other realms.
In retrospect, much of what he predicted seems to have panned out (he died in the early '60s) in the contemporary spectrum of American political thought, with its much narrower parameters than what existed even a century ago. I highly recommend Webb's book.
It ought to at least provide some intriguing context as we watch the ridiculous spectacle of the Democrats turning into a bunch of hyperventilating namby-pambies afraid of their own shadows, the best possible move they could make if they want to insure that everyone except Joe Lieberman wants them to go away. It gives one possible answer to why there is no viable alternative to that dysfunctional horror show.
It's the kind of day that makes me extra glad I've got "arts" in my job title (and a post will follow later or be appended here on some interesting stuff on that front)…
IN THE CD PLAYER:
The arts story currently underway covers a fascinating 10-CD set recorded by Alan Lomax in Haiti in 1936-37. It's one of the most interesting sets I've ever heard, and bears mentioning because right now the price has been lowered and part of the proceeds go directly to Haiti earthquake relief. It's an absorbing and unique set of music.
Check out the details here.
