I'm a "Les Misérables" fan. I've seen the play live quite a few times, and watched the 25th Anniversary Special countless times... Yesterday, Christmas day, I went to see the movie. Despite some issues with some of the singing, I thought it was spectacular!
The story, of course, always brings parallels with what I believe is the type of dystopian world ALEC, the NRA, and the American plutonomy and their political puppets in the Republican party, and much of the Democratic party, want to takes us.
A more contemporary analogy of this type of hell-on-earth world (for the common people), of course can be found in SLATE's article published today, "Georgia's Hunger Games."
Yes, it's a familiar theme, where an entire political machinery in a state has been fully taken over by corporatist interests, who then proceed to dictate fascist legislation, word-by-word, written by ALEC lobbyists and their puppet politicians.
And what do they want? Well, that's also obvious: They want to re-institute slavery. Destroy the social safety net, plunge the increasingly growing number of vulnerable people into poverty and artificially create conditions for the poor so onerous, so hellish that people in desperation would do anything, anything at all, to survive. And voilà, you (ALEC member corporatist members) have yourself an expanding pool of workers willing to accept subsistence wages.
And another bonus they get by moving their agenda forward is to keep the working class and the poor divided:
This allows state ideologues, she [Democratic state representative and minority leader Stacey Abrams] says, to pit the needy against one another in what she calls a "sort of Hunger Games of the poor," where the working poor are encouraged to look upon welfare spending as a drain on their own finances. " 'I'm poor because you took my money'—that's the dynamic that they set up."
These are the same old tricks plutocratic tyrants have always pulled off, and again, it kind of reminds me of the plight of the poor in 1848's France.
But having said all that, and having pointed out the true evil nature of what I consider to be a fascistic and dangerous corporatocracy in rapid ascendancy in the U.S., personally, I'm genuinely conflicted about what I detest more when it comes to very serious power struggles between a tiny but brutal and vicious plutocracy, and a dysfunctional, unprincipled, and cowardly left wing.
By now millions and millions of people know what's going on. Much of the left wing "intelligentsia" knows about ALEC, and the Koch Brothers, and the fascist cookie-cutter legislation they are spreading, like a cancer, across the country.
And yet, a solid agenda fails to materialize. One great hope, in Occupy Wall Street, fizzles away in the face of the corporatist propaganda machine (U.S. media), and due to their innate lack of organization, focus, and discipline (I attended several rallies in different cities, BTW).
And worst of all, you hear from so-called "moderate Democrats" who in the final analysis are willing to stake a position somewhere in between "right and wrong," as Prof. Robert Reich so succinctly put it in one of his latest tweets.
Think about that for a second... The majority of the people oppose the clearly fascistic and dangerous and oppressive legislative agenda by the current American plutonomy, and yet the NRA, ALEC, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, The Heritage Foundation, AEI, FowNews, and the myriad other miscreants associated with their agenda are able to ram through their "Hunger Games" world view, while on the Left we get dysfunction, division, fear, and the projection of powerlessness.
Have you notice that many "protests" organized by the left involved people laying down, playing dead, trying to show the results of some dastardly act by the fascist plutocrats? During the heyday of OWS what was in vogue was showing videos of protesters being beat up by the brutal militarized police forces cum corporate goons, ad nauseam.
I know, I know, the narrative goes something like, if people see the brutality from the police against peaceful protesters, we'll get more public support.
The same goes with the mentality of many diarists here, who spent precious time reporting and writing about the latest dastardly and crazy and fascistic and oppressive act by this or that Republican governor, ad nauseam, also in the hope that by exposing them, it will generate public support which eventually will translate in political course correction at the ballot box.
But folks, it's not about public support for sanity, and for the respect of science, and empiricism, and a balance approach to politics. That's already there. The American people, by and large, already support the concept of a decent and fair society.
No, this is a power struggle with a thuggish and brutal enemy. It will take more than complaining to take on these fascistic forces. Who are you going to complain to? The authorities? They're in their pockets (here, and here).
What we need is a clear and united agenda (front?); we need to help create the conditions to help bring about a new crop of intelligent and brave leaders; to have clear goals and come up with strategies based on a clear vision, commitment and discipline.
And most of all, we need to drop the term "moderate Democrat" from our vocabulary.