Boot me if you have to but I wrote this up yesterday and think it's worth repeating, providing an international perspective on what may be happening now.
What Can Be Done?
The right wing likes to proclaim that Ronald Reagan was responsible for bringing down the Soviet Union. Anyone with a knowledge of history and a knowledge of the Soviet Union knows that this is BS. In any event, the Soviet Union disappeared over a decade ago as a formal empire of Leninism/Stalinism. Many of the manipulative tools they used politically were not new except for the technologies. The corruption was endemic long before the Soviets appeared and looks to last long after they have disappeared. The abuse of the populace has a long and continued history as well. What concerns me here is that the tools used to support and sustain the ruling party have not only continued in the former Soviet Republics but have been adopted by the Republicans. This is why the Democrats can't win, unless they stand up and shout from the rooftops using every available megaphone. The DLC won't cut it with their hemming and hawing.
So, what are these tools? They are the ones that explain how the Republicans have maintained such strict discipline to ensure that their leadership gets its way so often. Fear.
A little background on me. In 1990, I was studying in Moscow, prior to graduate studies in Russian Literature (several years before I got involved in business and eventually moved on to an MBA). At this time, things were coming to an end for the Soviet Union and twice I jumped police barricades to join in the anti-Communist protests (in one of the bigger ones on Revolution Square, I was holding and waving the Estonian flag - no particular ties to Estonia, I just happened to be in that spot when it was handed to me). After the MBA, I went to the former Yugoslavia and was amid the protests against Milosevich. After my last contract there, my Ukrainian wife and I decided to return to her homeland to see whether we could make a start of it there. This was in 2004 and I found myself amid more uprisings. My wife and I were on the streets every day during the protests against the vote rigging and Kuchma's people. We had hopes for the future although they were somewhat muted because we both understand how things work over there.
How do they work? Suffice to say that anyone who has ever sniffed power and/or money over there is compromised. People are not truly free to speak their minds because someone, somewhere, has something on everyone else. It may be pictures of an illicit affair, it may be bank records from Switzerland, it may be mortgage records of homes in Cyprus and the Caribbean, it may be recordings of secret meetings discussing illegal activities. Whatever it is, THEY know about it. They track everyone who hints at interest in politics, they tail business leaders, they investigate activists. You cannot come into power unless you are already compromised because no one around you will trust you to stay in line if they don't have a way to control you. If you are too clean, you are dangerous, and you are publicly discredited with lies or simply killed before you can even make a start of it. Plus, they more often than not can control the ballot boxes.
I have very strong feelings that this is what has happened to our politics. Looking around the Orange County Fairgrounds last evening at the OC Mixer for business people, I noticed that there were many security firms who can do background checks into a wide variety of activities of potential clients or employees. If it is this easy for businesses to get their hands on this data, imagine how easy it would be for someone working within the real power structures to find compromising information on someone looking to get "inside."
I find it hard to believe that this is not happening since so many so-called moderates have rolled in one way or another to the wishes of this administration and its well known ties to the power structures (Cheney and the Bush backer Baker are two of the most prominent names within Republican circles going back 30 years). I believe they have information on most, if not all, of these politicians. Perhaps Senator Feingold is one of the few clean ones and, therefore, feels more free to speak his mind. There are a few others, I am sure, who have little information against them but they can manufacture information and use their contacts within the media to disseminate this disinformation.
I know it sounds a little too tin-foil hated but this is exactly what they want. I listen to some of the things people say in support of this administration, in private circles as well as public, and am so astonished that I don't know what to say or how to respond. I sit in amazement and think, surely others see through this outrageous, unbelievable BS. They must, therefore there is no need to speak up and respond to such stupidity. THEY like it this way because it means reasonable people are silent or silenced and, effectively, marginalized.
I don't know what the solution is but I am both disgusted and frustrated. Both resigned and ready to explode. Both sad and apathetic. How do we get the voice of truth out? How do we make the people see they have been had? How do we turn the power structure against the powerful who have manipulated it for their own personal gain? If even so many Democrats are indeed compromised then winning elections isn't going to help. I feel we need to tear it all up and start again.
In resignation,
LGRooney