Anyone with an ounce of clarity understands that the incarnation of the Democratic Party created by FDR is dying, riddled with the same corporate/theocrat cancer of militarism that killed the GOP. Having miscalculated their ability to control the theocrats within the GOP, the corporations have moved into the more secular Democratic party, in hopes of running the same old scam in a new body - like an "agent" from The Matrix. Since the GOP has devolved into a demagogic, brownshirt rabble, the demise of a citizen-responsive Democratic Party signals the end of democracy in its American, winner-take-all, two-party form and the rise of the de facto corporate state.
If you think America has just hit a little rough patch and that Barack Obama can turn things around, then you are at stage one - Denial. This diary is for people who have moved past that stage - people who have been watching America and American democracy go steadily downhill since the 1980 election and see the Obama Administration as just the latest stage in our demise - just as cancer has stages. People who have watched the Progressives be gerrymandered out of their own party (and FDR's) by corporate hacks like Rahm Emmanuel.
My take on our current state has most recently been articulated by Chris Floyd:
The quality of life for ordinary Americans, those outside the golden circle of the elite and their retainers, has decayed immeasurably – and measurably. Stagnant wages. Degraded infrastructure. A poisoned food chain. Whole communities -- with all their social, political, cultural and family networks -- gutted by the heedless flight of capital to cheap labor (and slave labor) markets abroad, and by the dissolution of an embodied economic life into the shadow-play of high finance, the ghostly manipulation of numbers that produces nothing of value except gargantuan profits for a very few. A bonfire of public amenities, making daily life harder, harsher, constricted, diminished. Ever-growing social and economic disparity, shrinking the circle of opportunity. Two million citizens behind bars, in prisons overflowing with non-violent drug cases – nightmarish institutions given over to gangs, neglect, punitive regimens and private profit.
Yet this long, grinding process of diminishment and degradation has been accompanied by a never-ending expansion of the war machine into a dominant position over almost every aspect of American life. Not even the ending of the Cold War slowed this excrescence; defense budgets grew, new enemies were found, there were new missions, new commands, new wars. The ruling elite of American society were – and are – obviously willing to let the welfare, prosperity, opportunities and liberties of the common people sink deeper and deeper into the mire, in order to finance a system structured around war, with all the attendant corruption, brutalization and accrual of authoritarian power that war brings.
This is the system we have. It’s right out in the open.
- C. Floyd 12/3/09
To pursue the medical analogy, America is suffering from multiple organ failure: Ponzi-fied finance, cherry-picked and recised health insurance scams, deliberate de-industrialization, dilapidated infrastructure starved of funds. These organs are failing because a bloated, cancerous military/police/intelligence apparatus has first call on our blood supply.
Here is the same recital of failure, using news events instead of analogies: In one week, the Obama administration has refused to sign the landmine treaty, defended John Yoo, and escalated in Afghanistan. Eric Prince has been revealed as a CIA agent, which raises the issue of "private armies" at the heart of our foreign policy. On the financial front, Wall Street tool, Ben Bernanke, is renominated and immediately talks about shredding Social Security and Medicare. Tim Geithner dismisses the Tobin Tax. Meanwhile, the relentless siege of healthcare reform continues with C-Street Democrat Bart Stupak inserting the Catholic Church smack in the middle of an already ruined healthcare debate, while Ben Nelson consults with Catholic bishops and Joe Lieberman becomes indistinguishable from a Republican.
Who has the backs of ordinary taxpayers on these issues? No one. Where is the Party of FDR? Comatose with a Do Not Resuscitate order signed by the leadership of the Democratic Party. The core of FDR's coalition - liberals/labor - has been demonized and largely excluded, if not destroyed. The New Deal regulations against financial piracy have been revoked or un-enforced - most notably Glass-Steagel. The New Deal social safety net has been privatized or bankrupted. Anyone with an ounce of awareness understands that the expressed wishes of the people (as shown by the election and by poll after poll) are being ignored and their infrastructure demolished, while corporations and their felonious CEOs are given mandates, bailouts, and free passes.
Those are the symptoms of incipient death, now let's talk about the Five Stages:
- Denial — "I feel fine."; "This can't be happening, not to me."
Denial is usually only a temporary defense for the individual.
After six years of being doormats for Bush, people in denial expected a Democratic majority in Congress to have some effect. When it didn't, they hoped that a Democratic president with a veto-proof majority would have an effect. When that didn't happen, it was because of the multiple disasters that the Bush administration left behind. DINO-deniers, like climate change deniers or evolution deniers, can always maintain the core of their worldview by throwing more and more of reality overboard.
In the case of changing the course set by the GOP, only a DINO-denier would say that keeping Gates (a Bush insider from way back), appointing Cheney's assassin-master, McCrystal, and reappointing Bernanke are necessary olive-branches to moderate Republicans. After a year of obstructionism, only a DINO-denier would defend the continuing refusal to get tough with the GOP, instead of caving in constantly in the name of non-existent "bipartisanship".
- Anger — "Why me? It's not fair!"; "How can this happen to me?"; "Who is to blame?"
Once in the second stage, the individual recognizes that denial cannot continue. Because of anger, the person is very difficult to care for due to misplaced feelings of rage and envy. Any individual that symbolizes life or energy is subject to projected resentment and jealousy.
Once past the shrinking ranks of DINO-deniers, I would guess that most Democrats fall into the angry camp. They are angry at Blue Dog Democrats who talk, act, and vote like Republicans. They are angry at the disconnect between rhetoric and action. They are angry at the continuing appointment of corporate hacks like Arne Duncan, Tom Vilsack, and the latest clown from the pesticide industry. They are angry at the stranglehold that Goldman-Sachs has on our economic policy team.
But, when progressives (speaking up for the average guy getting screwed by all this catering to elites) try to point to the rot at the heart of the party, they get all this projected resentment. Modest progressive actions are equated with TeaBagging. DINOs are jealous of the fact that Progressives are real Democrats, while they are just coprorate toadies.
- Bargaining — "Just let me live to see my children graduate."; "I'll do anything for a few more years."; "I will give my life savings if..."
The third stage involves the hope that the individual can somehow postpone or delay death.
Usually, the negotiation for an extended life is made with a higher power in exchange for a reformed lifestyle. Psychologically, the person is saying, "I understand I will die, but if I could just have more time..."
You can see the bargainers in the Democratic Party. A lot of them are channeling the Stage 2 anger into Stage 3 bargaining. They are decent people who are fighting for some kind, any kind of HCR - even though they recognize the odds against them. Its like: please, please hold the party together long enough to pass a pathetically weak and symbolic gesture that we still are the party of the common man, the party of FDR. Then we can die in peace.
- Depression — "I'm so sad, why bother with anything?"; "I'm going to die . . . What's the point?"; "I miss my loved one, why go on?"
During the fourth stage, the dying person begins to understand the certainty of death. Because of this, the individual may become silent, refuse visitors and spend much of the time crying and grieving. This process allows the dying person to disconnect oneself from things of love and affection. It is not recommended to attempt to cheer up an individual who is in this stage. It is an important time for grieving that must be processed.
At a certain point - perhaps weeks like this last one - people begin to reach overload on the really horrible political and economic news. They just give up. They tune out. The corporatists try to portray the fall-off in grass roots support as some kind of Progressive plot. But it is not. It is just people facing the reality of the demise of the Party of FDR - the demise of a party that stands up to banksters and sweatshoppers and the ever more brutal police state we have at home; the demise of a party that (unlike FDR) refuses to end Drug Prohibition (or even the hemp cultivation ban) no matter how much evidence is presented by police chiefs and Latin American governments that it is causing the problem, not stopping it.
When your complete lack of control over your political and economic fortunes in one of the worst economic and domestic political climates in our brief history as a nation finally sinks in, you get very, very depressed. (That is, if you are not a member of the vampire elites.)
- Acceptance — "It's going to be okay."; "I can't fight it, I may as well prepare for it."
The last stage of grief has been reached by those who either post GBCW diaries or ban-worthy rants (sort of death-by-cop suicides). They are checking out on within-the-party activism. They are accepting the reality that the Party of FDR is no more. They are moving on to whatever hellacious landscape is left behind the illusion of normality propagated by the corporate media. They have decided to "take the red pill".
------
It will be really interesting to see the results of the poll, below. Just for disclosure, I'm at "between depression and acceptance". I am sick of the cheerleaders, my anger is burned out, I was never a bargainer, and a year into this stinking depression, I'm depressed too.
There will always be some version of the Democratic Party and it will have its loyalists. But the Party of FDR is on its deathbed; Joe Lieberman is standing nearby with a pillow; and no one in the party leadership has made a move to get him out of the room.
Comments are closed on this story.