Once upon a time, there were yellow-dog Democrats. It was said they would vote for the Democratic candidate even if he or she were a yellow dog. But this is a Southernism, and the the Democratic Party of the yellow-dogs was the party of the old segregated South, as opposed to that of Lincoln, abolition, and Reconstruction. That all changed in the wake of President Johnson, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and Nixon's Southern strategy; there are no more yellow-dogs in the Democratic Party, and most of their heirs are Republicans.
There are, however, blue-dogs. These are Democrats from red states who tend to vote with Republicans on many issues. It's not clear why some of them are Democrats at all, as their positions are sometimes indistinguishable from those of their Republican neighbors. If you are a fan of the 1990's TV series Babylon 5, you might wonder if some of these blue-dogs simply enjoy playing the role of purple Drazi to their green Drazi neighbors. In decades past, however conservative blue-dogs were on issues like guns or abortion, they stood solidly with their fellow Democrats behind the New Deal legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and for the ordinary working American against powerful private interests. Regrettably that no longer seems to be the case. Needless to say, I am not a blue-dog Democrat.
So, what color dog am I? Read on, if you will.
The spectrum of visible light runs from red to violet. Beyond blue-dogs are violet-dogs and ultraviolet-dogs; these are, of course, the two wings of the Republican party, the cancer-promoting ultraviole(n)t-dogs including tea-partiers, Christian reconstructionists, and others of the rabid, barking-mad variety. I am pretty much the polar opposite of these folks, which puts me at the other end of the spectrum. I am a red-dog Democrat.
I am a red-dog because I believe capitalism is no longer a force for good in the world; it puts the interests of a small privileged class ahead of those of the rest of us, our communities, our nation, and our planet. Capitalism promotes greed, waste, irresponsible behavior, and the exploitation of working people. Capitalism is anti-family and anti-child; in a world of limited resources, it is a gigantic Ponzi scheme where wealth is constantly redistributed upwards, from people who must work for a living to the moneyed elite.
I do not believe democracy and capitalism are ultimately compatible. In democracy, the rule is one person, one vote; in capitalism it is one dollar, one vote. One principle or the other must prevail; in the ever smaller, yet ever more crowded world of this new century, where multinational capital forms a class largely untouchable by most governments, compromises like the social contract that grew out of Roosevelt's New Deal, where what was good for General Motors was good for America, no longer work. A community, a state, a nation must act in the best interests of its residents, or constantly yield to the demands of international capital. I am therefore a socialist, and stand firmly for democracy, fairness, and the struggle of working people to come together and assert their rights.
I look at Wall Street and observe that the lion's share of investment is speculative; it no longer creates wealth but rather redistributes it, much like a Las Vegas casino. I look at the industry in which I have worked these last thirty-odd years -- commercial radio broadcasting -- and find that myriad companies that once thrived serving their local communities have been subject to a frenzy of speculation that has left them merged, purged, and mired in debt, robbing the listening public of valuable services it once enjoyed, such as local call-in shows, local news, and coverage of emergencies like major storms. Much the same pattern prevails in many other industries; Wall Street sucks out the blood and casts the shrivelled corpses aside, like some giant arachnid out of Tolkien's nightmares. The rusting ruins of New England's once booming industries are all around me; as capitalism made them, so did it break them, moving on to South Carolina, Mexico, and China.
There is also the Earth to be considered, its finite resources, and its limited capacity for the accumulated waste of two centuries of fossil-fuel-driven industry. The economic incentives capitalism creates are profoundly destructive, whether to rain forests, fish stocks, arable land, or clean air or water. No one can stop to clean up his mess, lest his competitor beat him to the gold. This is not sustainable, and only the power of a united people concerned for its common future can put a stop to such perversions.
I do not realistically expect the lone voice of one red-dog to make much difference; if he who has the gold makes the rules, then the rules will only place the getting of even more gold ahead of all other concerns. But I do think we red-dogs need to be heard, if only to balance the increasingly strident voices of the ultraviolets.
Marx had it right: workers of all countries, unite. And we are all workers here, blue-collar and white-collar alike, whether our skins are are pink, brown, yellow, or red; whether we worship one God, several gods, or none; whether we treasure our guns or want to live free of such weapons; and regardless of whom we love or what sort of families we have. We must demand change, an end to privileged power, and a new order founded in democracy and socialism.
It's time for us red-dogs to make ourselves heard.