Don't you ever wonder why, when poll after poll show that GOP dogma is totally out of step with the majority of the American people, they keep WINNING? We Liberals focus on the trees, not the forest.
The John Birch Libertarians assumed control of the Republican Party this year, and are about to take over the government. They've spent 40 patient years and hundreds of millions of dollars to co-opt even the Neoconservatives more limited visions of power and take control of the government.
Sounds crazy? I used to think so too, until I started following the money. It extends into every avenue of power and influence in this country, from cradle to grave.
Last week I published a pretty depressing piece that ended about two weeks additional research into what has turned into a repeated visit down the dark rabbit hole of GOP billionaire funders.
A primary reason that we have zero clue about what's going on is because we only get snapshots of the trees, and some very small trees at that, from the media, the 4th Estate of American politics, that should be informing us.
The biggest place that mainstream journalism has repeatedly fallen down is in following the money that puts out all of the spin. Two reasons for that:
First, they can't, or at least they fear that they cannot. Many of the places where they work are either directly held by some of these billionaires, or corporations where they hold significant influence, or they're held by people who do business with the Mellon-Scaifes, Kochs, et al. who don't want to run afoul of them.
Even consortiums like former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell's group that bought the Philadelphia Inquirer can cause journalists to worry, when they come upon a story, if the boss of the one-newspaper town will take offense. [See the video]
Sure, you can find a job in another town if they fire you... maybe. The corporate hegemony of big publishing companies like Gannett and Tribune and News Corp may dial you out nationwide.
Second, apparently it's boring. I asked Thom Mozloom of, who is a regular on Sirius/XM's POTUS channel, why he never follows the money sourcing back into the PAC ads which are his beat. He tweets: "It'd be nice - but the only 2 people that would listen are you and me."
American news consumption is like being at a lovely dinner party held in tents on the African veldt. You see the pride of lions charging the table, about to dismember your host, but apparently no one wants to be bored with the details because it will spoil the party.
This has been part of the big plan though. In the article I go back to the real political forest that rolls us back to the 1970s and Justice Powell's last act before becoming a Supreme Court justice: The Powell Memorandum.
It's fascinating stuff. Powell thumb-nailed the whole reassertion of power by the Right through webs of think tanks and astroturf groups that you're seeing today in 1971. The Neocons launched out of that structure.
The Libertarians, like the Kochs, tried their hand at a third party. They realized you can't grab enough power in a two-party system that way, so, they bought one of the parties.
You find their invasion started in the late 1980s co-opting groups and think-tanks that the Neocons had set up. Then they moved on to establish their own base, buy media, and intimidate other media. They pressed for judiciary appointments at low levels, knowing that these people would roll through the system and make it to higher judicial roles. They co-opted Scalia and Thomas on the SCOTUS, inviting them to their planning sessions at private retreats.
Politically, their RINO-hunting arm, the Club for Growth, has been "winning" for the Libertarian cause even when Democrats win. They purge moderates from the party during primaries. Dick Lugar of Indiana is the most recent RINO take-down.
They have not just invested in politics, but in every walk of American life that can influence opinion, or control the population. They have invaded schools (the DeVos family of Amway) and they have spent millions politicizing religious organizations.
They torqued single issue voters from gun nuts to anti-abortionists into government haters.
As I point out in a piece that I did on Paul Ryan, they have systemically undermined America's view of the government, which not only protects us from foreign invaders, but also guys like Mitt Romney and the Kochs, so that people will gleefully slit their own throats in tribute to these American Lords.
What is new, particularly in W.'s reign of terror, is that they have pushed for bureaucratic appointments to gut the federal government from within. They attack regulations and laws passed that restrict their unfettered activity by underfunding or underhiring.
Take the BP disaster. A large part of the regulatory fail on that one was because there were minimal resources and personnel in place to check deep water rigs, even though the law regarding their safety had not been gutted.
The reach of these people extends into entertainment media as well. Lots of reality programming keeps us stupid and happy. Thought-provoking television has had to move to places like HBO, because the networks are all about keeping the masses pacified.
This has been going on for decades, pretty much unfettered. When they have a setback, like ants, they regroup, wait patiently, and then pour millions into rebuilding or extending their network.
Liberals, democrats, are not so well organized. Unions have been under pressure, and liberal givers do not have the same bold vision that the Kochs and other American fascists (used in the classical 19th century sense of the term), for long-range planning.
We've gone to the short ground game. Win this election. Get the ball moved down-field on healthcare 30 yards, and hope for the other 70 another day.
Even if Democrats get focused, and get a long-term ground game, the dark forces of American politics have a 35 year head-start.
How do we compensate for that, to get America back on a progressive track and take it out of the hands of the know-nothings and their puppeteers in the 1%?
That's the first question that Mr. Obama and the DCCC need to answer after defeating Mr. Romney in November.
My shiny two.