As the left and right try to grapple with the Texas suicide bomber and show whether or not he’s on "our side" or "theirs," I can’t help but be intrigued by his inability to be classified as one or the other.
He points to a more centralized argument that the system is simply broken—regardless of which side of our political party is presently "in power." (I say this because business has been in power for the last 60 years, regardless of the letter next to the politician’s name.) Now, I am a liberal, and that means I care about the environment and think equal rights, diversity, socialized medicine, and my labor union are awesome. But I also know that the politicians on my side are so heavily subsidized by the business interests who profit by exploiting the working class that they just sort of give lip service to my causes to win my vote but plan on doing as little as possible about it. That doesn’t mean I will ever vote for a republican again. I mean, they don’t even give lip service to the poor and middle class. They do, but it is in the form of Jesus speak. It seems unlikely that most of them actually believe any of it, though. Leo Strauss taught them that there is only one natural structure, and that is the powerful controlling the weak, and that religion is a fine tool for manipulating the lower classes.
So you take this unhinged guy who is anti-taxes and pro-health care, and you put enough talking heads on the tv calling for overthrowing the government, and you end up with this guy railing at the system in the most tragically Quixotic way. Yet he is right, the system is broken, and to ignore that for any longer is to further suppress the knowledge that all of us have that something is terribly, terribly wrong here. There is a palpable sense that the country has spun wildly out of our control, and it doesn't seem to matter whether dems or reps are in office, BIG BUSINESS is in control. I am given hope by the fact that the recent SCOTUS decision is widely hated across party lines. I would like to see the national dialogue become less about republicans and democrats and MORE about workers vs. owners. Until workers take some power back from the corporations, it will not matter which side is in office.