(This was in comment to Destor's blog; kinda hated to muck up the sweet lines of his thread with it.)

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Reading through the comments on this thread, I’m struck by the prism everyone’s looking through is confined to the next Presidency.   ‘Can’t take a Repub’; ‘I won’t tell him I’m in until…’; ‘I’ll weigh the field, vote for the best’, and so on.

I reached the point of No Confidence awhile back over a couple big issues and now realize there’s no way on earth I’ll ever vote for Obama in 2012.  Actually, it’s freed me up quite a lot to be more committed to taking The Long View: not just considering the next cycle, the next President or Congress, but how to save the republic at all.

Not that anyone might give a fig about my thinking, but I thought I might write it anyway.  ;o)

The degree to which our federal electoral politics is captive to the present duopoly is staggering; the degree to which it’s now captive to the military-industrial-security state through the WOT and War on Drugs is disgusting.  And the degree to which it’s now captive to the 1%, 5%, whatever, at the top of the income and wealth pyramid is not only alarming, but dangerous.  The best writers are trying to get us to remember that this situation never stands; history shows us that, whether it’s changed through armed revolution (which I really fear for obvious reasons), or even what happened during the Gilded Age with labor strikes and violence leading to Progressivism and Teddy’s trust-busting and FDR’s and LBJ’s policy enactments to right some of the wrongs done by capitalism run amok.  Now the Second Gilded Age is here: with a vengeance.

It’s becoming clearer to me that the only real force that has a chance of bringing us back citizen democracy, financial justice, and unwinding the MIC and security state is people power, major populous peaceful revolts and strikes, financial withholding from major corporations and banks, whatever works to force change.  I tend to vacillate over inside or outside the Democratic party, but that’s another discussion.

I saw this excerpt from a 2007 piece by Chris Floyd on a blog recently; it chilled me:

“Tomorrow is here. The game is over. The crisis has passed — and the patient is dead. Whatever dream you had about what America is, it isn’t that anymore. It’s gone. And not just in some abstract sense, some metaphorical or mythological sense, but down in the nitty-gritty, in the concrete realities of institutional structures and legal frameworks, of policy and process, even down to the physical nature of the landscape and the way that people live.

The Republic you wanted — and at one time might have had the power to take back — is finished. You no longer have the power to keep it; it’s not there.

[snip]

It won’t come with jackboots and book burnings, with mass rallies and fevered harangues. It won’t come with “black helicopters” or tanks on the street. It won’t come like a storm – but like a break in the weather, that sudden change of season you might feel when the wind shifts on an October evening: everything is the same, but everything has changed. Something has gone, departed from the world, and a new reality has taken its place.

As in Rome, all the old forms will still be there: legislatures, elections, campaigns – plenty of bread and circuses for the folks. But the “consent of the governed” will no longer apply; actual control of the state will have passed to a small group of nobles who rule largely for the benefit of their wealthy peers and corporate patrons.

To be sure, there will be factional conflicts among this elite, and a degree of free debate will be permitted, within limits; but no one outside the privileged circle will be allowed to govern or influence state policy. Dissidents will be marginalized – usually by “the people” themselves. Deprived of historical knowledge by an impoverished educational system designed to produce complacent consumers, not thoughtful citizens, and left ignorant of current events by a media devoted solely to profit, many will internalize the force-fed values of the ruling elite, and act accordingly. There will be little need for overt methods of control.”

It reminded me of a graphic arts representation comparing Huxley and Orwell Obey linked to on a comment yesterday: What ruins us, what we are conditioned to love, or what we are conditioned to hate?

When I hear many of you fearing a Republican presidency, it’s almost always the wingnut one, and it may be you’re right.  I’d hate it, but I’d hate losing this country to a corporate theocratic plutocracy forever even more; ergo, I’m willing to risk more in order to ensure it not happening.  When I see how complacent Dems have become since we have a ‘Democratic’ President, I shudder.  Yes, yes; I know the arguments by heart.  But for the sake of this argument, I picture that we would all kick back against a (perhaps) more extreme version of what we have now. 

There have been those on these boards accusing Dems in WI for allowing Walker to get elected; sorta tickled me.  But WI proves the point: had Walker and his friends not pushed the envelope, over-reached on austerity cuts, larger corporate tax give-aways and tried and somewhat succeeded in outlawing collective bargaining, the labor movement wouldn’t be enjoying a resurgence now!  It’s not written yet how far all of this may reach, but the seeds have been planted: even younger voters now favor unions by 2:1!  I hope the momentum is still alive; there are so many crucial issues just now competing for reporting and attention that it’s hard to say.  Today’s Supreme Court election in WI may hint at trends; recall petitions and activism in Ohio, MI, and elsewhere.  Will there be calls for general strikes soon?  Will there be massive protests arrange on Facebook or Lefty websites?  It may all be too early yet; but it sure won’t be by 2012. 

Food and energy will likely be dangerously high; the wars will still be going at a trillion bucks a year real cost; our social safety nets will be diminished; jobs will be likely be scare, and the next financial bubble may have burst by then.  And it will not hold when people are hungrier and living without hope.

All the best writers trying to exhort us toward massive populist social movements warn us over and over not to expect to win in the short run.  The game plans have to be to build and build power, to keep organizing within movements, see what works, jettison what doesn’t, but to keep to our core beliefs: we all know what justice for all American looks like, and it seems to include justice for all people around the world, which our nation arguably has been not considering.  We’re learning more and more what our Fed and IMF have been doing has been cavalier toward the people of those nations not in the power elite.

Bill Moyers quoting Farm Labor Organizer Baldamar Velasquez:

 "It's OK if it's impossible; it's OK!" Now I'm going to speak to you as organizers. Listen carefully. The object is not to win. That's not the objective. The object is to do the right and good thing. If you decide not to do anything, because it's too hard or too impossible, then nothing will be done, and when you're on your death bed, you're gonna say, "I wish I had done something. But if you go and do the right thing NOW, and you do it long enough "good things will happen-something's gonna happen."

The sole reservation I’ve had in my theory is Supreme Court nominees, but I’m going to have to think that major changes in the power structure and economic hierarchy ruling politics could also force changes in the SC, and in voting, like instant run-off, and a system designed to exclude more than the legacy parties, and laws to unwind Citizens United; hell, be honest: even Dems didn’t want to do diddley-squat to neutralize it.  And as Bill Moyers quotes Howard Zinn: 

"The Constitution gave no rights to working people; no right to work less than 12 hours a day, no right to a living wage, no right to safe working conditions. Workers had to organize, go on strike, defy the law, the courts, the police, create a great movement which won the eight-hour day, and caused such commotion that Congress was forced to pass a minimum wage law, and Social Security, and unemployment insurance....Those rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel and violate the law in order to uphold justice."

 Anyway.  That’s my dashed-off Longer-view, ‘No; I’m not in’ thinking.

The Moyers piece I linked to above is good; it's from a speech he gave on the anniversary of Howard Zinn's death.  The video is here.

Anyhoo.  As the Council of Elrond knew, you can't just walk into Mordor; it takes the regular people to band together and find the way to Destroy the One Ring.   ;o)