28th Amendment

Congress shall make no law establishing the citizenship of a corporate or other artificial entity, or grant them rights equal to or greater than the rights of citizens.

The wording may not be perfect, but I think this is one goal we should strive for. Corporations are not humans, and do not deserve to be treated the same. Along with this we ought to repeal the 1975 SUN-PAC law that allowed corporations to create and fund political action committees with their own money. This is the root of many of our problems now. Corporations are paying less taxes and have more representation in our government than we do. It's time we put a stop to that.

Whales
Juan Cole makes a point about the difference between the right and the left as far as money goes:

Exhibit A is William J. Bennet. Bennett has a Ph.D. in political philosophy from the University of Texas. If he had been a man of the left, he would be teaching that subject at some small liberal arts college for $70,000 a year. Because he was on the Right, he had an entree to the Reagan administration, and rose to become Secretary of Education and then drug czar.

The vast opportunities open to an intellectual on the Right can be seen in Bennett's career. It is often forgotten that he deserted public service as drug czar after only about a year, leaving all of his commitments unfulfilled. He was able to land at Joe Coors's and Richard Mellon Scaife's so-called American Heritage Foundation. Bennett's opportunities were so many and so lucrative that the hard work of public service, and the ethics rules requiring careful reporting of income, seemed increasingly unappealing. The opportunities are so enormous, if one is willing to oppose affirmative action and support increasing inequality of wealth and bash unions, that it is even hard to keep such persons in high-profile, remunerative public service positions on the Right. They are sucked out of them by the corporate vacuum cleaner.

The next time we meet Bennett, he has somehow made so much money that he can drop $6 million in Las Vegas casinos in a single year (he says he won as much as he lost, which, if true, means he probably cheats). This level of gambling makes him a "whale" in casino terms, given all sorts of perquisites. That is a very different life than teaching in a small liberal arts college, having spent one's youth making in the $20,000s and $30,000s a year (that would have been true of Bennett's generation of academics). And the price of admission to all those riches? Say things like that "homosexuals" have an average lifespan of 42 years, or public education should be privatized, and blame poor people for being poor because they are lazy and immoral and gamble too much.

I've said this before, though not so well as Prof. Cole does. Amidst all the "slave state - free state" bickering that goes on, the big issue that gets lost is the the right wing pays good money to people to create and put out the message. Whether you're a writer like David Brock or Robert Novak, a former politician like Bennett, or even an insane maniac like Coulter, the right ponies up the dough so that these people can stay in the spotlight and focus on the cause. And in the bubble world of the American media, which is owned by the same corporate interests who bankroll the GOP leadership and think tanks, it's all perfectly fine, because "debate" is about comparing what person X says to what person Y says. If X says the world is round, it's perfectly within bounds to allow Y to say no, the world is flat in the pretense of "balance". The networks don't care because it gives them the opportunity to say they are covering "both sides" of the story, Y certainly doesn't care, because Y is paid a lot of money to say the world is flat and never has to worry about things like credibility and accountability. Meantime, X is expected to give demonstrations of proof which are quickly and easily denounced by the many well-paid Y's. Ad nauseum.

The question becomes, then, What do we do about it? While I certainly think that the wealthy on the left need to dig into their pockets and start supporting some of the better left-wing bloggers (and of course, I would like to be hired as a radio host), I'm not entirely sure that just having an "alternate" viewpoint is enough. The GOP does a great job of manipulating people to vote against their own interests, but what's more troubling is that there are so many willing to be manipulated. Do we really want to appeal to people's darker side for the sake of winning elections? I know a lot of people who think working 10-12 hours a day, six days a week ought to be the norm, how do you counter that? I don't think you can. Is it a red state-blue state thing, or is it an urban-rural thing? The South isn't as solidly "red" as those in the blue states say they are, and the blue states aren't as solidly "blue" as the red-staters think, either. It's just that there's a big enough majority in either to keep them the way they are for the foreseeable future.

I wish I had an easy answer. I wish I had the time to formulate one. But I have to go to work. And so do most of you reading this. And that is the crux of the problem. As long as there are "whales" like Bennett being funded by people like Scaife, we'll always be small fish.

Open Thread: Show 75
Listen here. Comment below. I know, I know, not a lot of posts lately...it's a holiday weekend, for crying out loud! I'm taking it easy! Yeesh!

Happy Thanksgiving
Just a note to say have lots of turkee...enjoy...

Good News
The White Rose Society is back, and soon all 74 shows will be available there! Ben Burch was taking a little sabbatical and had some technical issues to deal with but I spoke to him yesterday and we got the whole shebang dealt with. So if you missed a show, White Rose is where to go!

Open Thread: Show 74
Listen here. Comment below. Win one for the Gipper!

BTW, show #75 won't be up until Sunday, because of my surgical procedure today...my throat will be far too sore to get a show done by Thursday. Have a happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Just Wondering
Violence Surges Through Georgia
By EDWARD WONG

Published: November 20, 2004

ATLANTA, Georgia, Nov. 20 - Violence surged through Georgia on Saturday as a tenacious insurgency led by Baptists kept up relentless assaults in a string of major cities, from Savannah to Macon to Atlanta.

At dawn, insurgents armed with M-16 rifles and rocket-propelled grenades tried storming a police station in the northwestern Atlanta neighborhood of Marietta, where European and Georgian soldiers had engaged in a bloody church shootout on Friday. The gun battle at the station left three Georgia policemen dead and two others injured, a spokesman for the governor said.

Hours later, a car bomb exploded in downtown Atlanta, at the eastern end of the bridge over the Downtown Connector leading to the fortified compound housing the European Union embassy and interim Georgia government headquarters. The bomb was aimed at a convoy of vehicles from a European security contractor, and at least one Georgian was killed and another injured, witnesses said.

Four employees of the Georgia Department Of Transportation were gunned down in a drive-by ambush, and three Georgia National Guardsmen died in explosions in western Atlanta during gun battles with insurgents, officials said.

An ambush on a NATO military convoy in central Atlanta ended with the death of one soldier, the military said. Nine others were wounded in what appeared to be a highly coordinated attack, with insurgents using explosives, automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

Fighting raged in the rubble of Macon, a city largely decimated by NATO troops during a week-long offensive. Two French soldiers were killed and four wounded in a guerilla ambush, military officials said. The offensive smashed a safe haven for the insurgents, but guerillas still roam the devastated streets, sniping at NATO troops and scaring away military engineers brought in to try to reconstruct the city.

At least 1,216 NATO troops have died since the start of the war.

The unrelenting wave of assaults in the Baptist-dominated parts of the state indicate that the attack on Macon could have inflamed Baptist resentment against the European presence rather than pacified it. European and Georgian officials have found it impossible during the 19-month war to persuade hostile Baptists to lay down their arms and engage in legitimate politics. That goal, which appears increasingly quixotic as the insurgency grows in strength and lethality, becomes all the more pressing as the state lurches toward its first democratic elections since the occupation began, scheduled for the end of January.

The Baptists, who make up the bulk of the population here, ruled the region for decades, until the European invasion toppled them from power. Former Governor Sonny Perdue, now awaiting trial in a Geneva prison, heightened ethnic and religious differences by installing Baptists in the most senior positions and persecuting Methodists and Catholics. Now, with a power and security vacuum throughout Georgia, those tensions are emerging with a vengeance and threatening to unravel the very social fabric of the state.

The delineation has been drawn starkly in the last two weeks, when Baptist-dominated cities exploded during and immediately after the Macon offensive. Last April, when NATO forces made an ill-fated assault on Macon, thousands of unruly Methodists rose up also, led by firebrand minister Laurence E. Wilson. During this latest invasion, Mr. Wilson condemned the European's use of force, but did not call on his militia to fight, showing that even the most radical Methodists were prepared to take part in the elections and seize power through legitimate means rather than through the barrel of a gun.

The most troublesome spots remain in the southern part of the state, which includes the volatile cities of Savannah and Macon, and in the suburbs of Atlanta, which has become the second front of the insurgency.

On Saturday, NATO set up roadblocks around Savannah and broadcast messages calling on the residents to turn over any "terrorists," Reuters reported. NATO is engaged in a holding action in Savannah. They have a presence at the government center and several outposts downtown, but they do not have real control of the city - insurgents roam freely and regularly murder residents deemed to be collaborating with the Europeans or Georgian government.

The level of violence in Savannah has spiked in the last two weeks, because many guerillas are believed to have fled Macon in the run-up to the offensive and sought haven in Savannah, 130 miles south and east, senior European commanders say.

In Marietta, four lynched bodies have been discovered in recent days, European military officials said. Nine other bodies have been found with bullet wounds to the head. European and Georgian officials are working to identify the bodies, but early signs suggest they are Georgian security officers.

Christian Soldiers, the organization founded by radical Baptist Pat Robertson, posted an Internet message dated Thursday that said it had lynched two Georgian soldiers in public. At least one eyewitness told The New York Times on Friday that he saw the killings and said that the bodies had been left hanging for hours because people had been afraid to take them down.

European and Georgian forces are trying to root out resilient insurgent bands in Marietta that pushed the city to the edge of chaos last week. On Thursday, groups of guerillas stormed a half-dozen police stations and made off with weapons and uniforms after setting fire to the buildings and squad cars. Only 8 of the city's 400 police officers stayed on the job.

The Army of Christ The King, one of the state's most militant groups, posted an Internet message on Saturday saying it had shot dead two members of the Democratic Party. A video showed two gagged and blindfolded men being shot in the back of their heads, Reuters reported.

The car bombing in Atlanta took place at around 12:30 p.m, as a convoy of sport utility vehicles carrying Western security contractors drove near the North Street bridge. A suicide car bomb tried ramming into the convoy. The Westerners escaped, but a Georgia man in a pick-up behind the bomber was incinerated.

Bits of metal and glass lay scattered across the street, storefronts had been blown out and the man's charred body could still be seen in the cab of the pick-up.

"I just parked my car and walked away for a few yards when I felt a big explosion," said Albert Garrison, a resident of the embattled city. "My car was close to the scene and it was badly damaged."

In a bit of positive news, a Vermont woman abducted recently by insurgents announced her release to reporters. The woman, Theresa Bowers Wright, said her captors had treated her well. Last week, insurgents released a video that showed the apparent fatal shooting of Margaret Deitch, a European aid worker kidnapped last month.

In Berlin, the German finance minister, Hans Eichel, said he had reached an agreement with the U.S. Treasury Secretary to have Georgia's creditors write off up to 80 percent of the state's crippling $120 billion debt.


Robert F. Worth contributed reporting from Macon, and Richard A. Oppel Jr. from Marietta.

Leaving The Slave State
Ever have your boss tell you that when you take a break without clocking out, it's "stealing" from the company? Ever have a situation where your work is done (including the cleaning up) but there's still ten minutes or so left in the day, and the boss wants you to be doing something because while you're on the clock, you need to be active somehow? This happens all the time, you know. Productivity is the key word here, which in the real world means that you work harder for less money, because it makes your immediate supervisors look like they're "efficient", and it makes their supervisors look like they're saving the company money.

You know, one of the reasons I have trouble hanging on to jobs is because I have a lot less tolerance for this sort of bullshit than most other people, who will put up with anything because they need that check (A more direct term would be "blackmail"). Some people even consider it honorable in some way to put up with it, it shows how tough they are. Of course, it only makes it easier for the bosses to take advantage of it: you work your ass off for not enough pay, while the people on top get more money in a week than you see in a year (well OK it depends on how big the company you work for is, but since big corporations are driving smaller businesses out, the analogy applies to a lot more people than it used to). But because I won't put up with this, I get branded as a "troublemaker". I have this strange belief that I'm there to do a specific job. I don't shirk my responsibilities, but when my task is finished, I try to take it easy. It's not aerobics, you know: you paid me to do X and I did it, gimme a sec to get geared up so I can do Y. It's yet another example of how I take my work seriously, but not my job. It's also a good reason why I'm always broke.

The reason I bring this up is because of this article in the NY Times about how people are being forced to work while "off the clock":

Soon after Trudy LeBlue began working at the new SmartStyle hair salon outside New Orleans, her salon manager began worrying that business was too slow and profits were too weak.

To keep costs down, Ms. LeBlue said, the manager often ordered her and the two other stylists to engage in a practice, long hidden, that appears to have spread to many companies: working off the clock.

Many weeks, Ms. LeBlue spent 40 hours in the salon, but was ordered to clock out for 20 of them while waiting for customers to show up, she said. With the salon's computer tracking her official hours, she was told to clean up and stock merchandise during the unpaid stretches.

"If you weren't doing hair or a perm, they'd tell you to get off the clock, but you still had to stay in the salon," she said.

What angered her most was her paltry paycheck, which she said often came to just $200 for two weeks, even after 80 hours at work. For Ms. LeBlue, that worked out to $2.50 an hour, less than half of the $5.15-an-hour federal minimum wage and her official rate, $5.35 an hour.

Workers at hair salons, supermarkets, restaurants, discount stores, call centers, car washes and other businesses who have murmured only to one another about off-the-clock work are now speaking up and documenting the illegal practice.

In other words, the company is stealing from them. There's no other way to put it. It used to be that we had laws dealing with these things that were actively enforced, and employers who actually were concerned about the physical and financial well-being of their employees. Those days no longer exist. Mandate. Will Of The People. Of course, this attitude suits the slave states just fine, it's how they've historically been treated and it's what they expect. And it's a good example of how, when I use the term "slave state", it means more than just geography: it's a state of mind, a belief that you'll never do any better than the job you have right now, that your supervisors are your superiors (in all aspects), and you don't deserve to be treated decently.

Some people overcome this. They start their own businesses and work for themselves. Others, like the comedienne Roseanne, break out in a more spectacular fashion. Despite what you mght think of her personally, she had the courage to step out and say "I'm not putting up with this any more!" Granted, not a lot of people have the kind of talent she has, but the important thing for her was taking that first step and seeing that there was something better, or at the least that she deserved better treatment and was unafraid to do something about it. It's an attitude I wish more of us had today. If enough people had that mindset, even if they never became the star of a TV show, they could have a much better life and make the kind of money our parents (and for some of you, your grandparents) made, thanks to the New Deal and progressive liberal policies. It wasn't the kind of money the celebrities make, but enough to pay your rent and bills, go out to eat every now and again, and save for the future. Despite the rhetoric coming from the Bush administration and its corporate allies, that was the real "ownership society". People had ownership over their lives because they made a decent living and had the time to enjoy their lives.

I'm glad that people are starting to speak up about this. Of course, they shouldn't expect a lot of sympathy from the government: after all, the people in charge of the Labor Department are more interested in destroying labor than helping it. But if enough people left the "slave state" things might change for them, for the better.

Open Thread: Show 73
Listen here. Comment below. Cuz I'm the Tax Man...yeah, I'm the Tax Maaan...

Think Bigger
Digby has an interesting post about how we (sarcastically) ought to take a second look at the Bill Of Rights in order to appease the slave-staters. But IMO concentrating on the Bill Of Rights is small potatoes: what we really need (more sarcastically) is to ditch the entire idea of "self rule", which is the very basis of the Constitution to begin with. When you start with the premise (as the slave-staters do) that some people are just naturally better than others, then there's no need for that pesky Bill Of Rights to begin with. Even in our democracy, your rights are limited, because anyone who gets powerful enough to disrupt the real powers that be (whoever they are), they get taken out, either directly (JFK, RFK, MLK) or politically (Carter, Clinton, Gore, Kerry).

And, according to my nemesis BChan, monarchies last longer than democracies anyway, so we might as well revert to one while we have the chance. Since the Bush family currently embodies all that is America, we can make new laws easy: what they say goes. Until, that is, the next family comes along and deposes them, then it's whatever they say goes. See how easy? No fuss, no muss. That's what God wants, anyway, so there's nothing you can do about it.

I know this would work just fine. I live in a slave state (Georgia) and despite all their talk about "freedoms" and "rights" this is exactly what most of these people would love to see. They don't want the trouble of governing themselves, they just want to use the "government" as a tool to get rid of the folks they don't like.

So never mind tweaking the so-called "Bill Of Rights". Let's dump the whole Constitution so we can get back to bidness. If you fags and niggers and liberals don't like it, we'll just kill ya. That's the way the world is, bub.

Open Thread: Show 72
Listen here. Comment below.

By the way, today is my birthday, it's also my wife's birthday. I'm 43, the wife is 45. So there.

Dear NY Times:
Re: Vote Fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are Quickly Buried

Yes that's right, those crazy bloggers, what did they know? After all, they told us there were no WMD in Iraq, and that there was no connection between Saddam and Al-Qaeda months before the war, but thank goodness the Times and the well-paid members of the former Fourth Estate were there to ridicule these rumormongers; that is, until after thousands of US soldiers and Iraqi civilians were killed in a pointless war and occupation. Oops, they say! Those nutty bloggers were right, after all! What a faux pas! Let's move on to something new!

Once again our so-called "professional" media has fallen flat on its face. Was there actual fraud during the election? How much coverage did the Times and other media outlets give towards irregularities and insecurities in the current system? Maybe if you all spent more time doing some actual investigative journalism and less time reprinting propaganda on both sides (and heaping scorn on people trying to do REAL investigative journalism in your absence), we might have a better idea.

-Joe Vecchio

Busy Week
Been a busy, crazy week, a lot of stuff going on on a personal level. I'm working on a few larger posts that I hope to get online this weekend. There was no show yesterday, as I would have liked, because I was too busy before work and too tired afterwards. Again, it's one of those things that happens when you don't have as much time as you'd like to do the things you want to do...

Open Thread: Show 71
Listen here. Comment below. Are ya ready? Are ya with it? OK let's go!

Easy Weekend
I've been working on some stuff over the last couple days or so, mostly going over in my head what I want to say about things. Part of me wants to rush it, another part says to calm down and take it easy so you get it right. I'll probably do the latter, because everything I'm writing now sounds too depressing. There'll be a new show up either late this evening or early tomorrow.

Open Thread: Show 70
Listen here. Comment below. Stand and fight!

Culture Wars
Juan Cole writes:

For instance, a lot of Democrats would like to see gay marriage or at least civil gay unions passed into law. This is a matter of equity, since gay partners can't even get into a hospital to see an ill partner because hospitals limit visits to close family.

This issue scares the bejesus out of the red states.

But if Democrats were sly, there is a way out. The Baptist southern presidential candidate should start a campaign to get the goddamn Federal government out of the marriage business. It has to be framed that way. Marriage should be a faith-based institution and we should turn it over to the churches. If someone doesn't want to be married in a church, then the Federal government can offer them a legal civil contract (this is a better name for it than civil union). That's not a marriage and the candidate could solemnly observe that they are taking their salvation in their own hands if they go that route, but that is their business. But marriage is sacred and the churches should be in charge of it.

If you succeeded in getting the Federal government out of the marriage business, then the whole issue would collapse on the Republicans. You appeal to populist sentiments against the Feds and to the long Baptist tradition of support for the US first amendment enshrining separation of religion and state.

This is just plain wrong. Federal intereference is fine with them, as long as it benefits them. If the Federal government would pass a law reinstituting slavery, they'd be all for it. The South voted for Democrats because they were the party of segregation, as soon as the Dems started supporting civil rights they jumped ship to the Republicans. I wonder what Lincoln would have thought about the GOP waving the Confederate flag? It doesn't matter whether you're talking about fags, niggers, yankees, liberals, whatever; if you're not a white Southerner you might as well not even exist as far as they're concerned. Out here in Flyover Country, where the Real People live, nobody's buying [Kerry's] BS. That's as plain as it is. They are "real people". We aren't. And you'll never convince them otherwise.

Aftermath
To my friends on the left who kept talking about a Kerry landslide, let me be the first to say I Told You So. I knew that Kerry would have to take 70-80% of the vote in order to overcome the GOP's activities. Rove always seems to manage to get just enough to win, he understands very clearly that in politics there is no such thing as second place. 2000 wasn't a wake-up call, it was a snooze button. 2004 has shown us how far we need to go, and how difficult it is to start a political movement. The GOP didn't get where they are overnight, ya know; this is a project thirty years in the making, and they are peaking right now. Last night was a reminder that we still don't get it.

This does affect me on a personal level, by the way. It will make it more difficult for my wife to get disability, which means another few years in poverty. It will also make it more difficult for her to get the medical attention she needs. I hope she can still get her surgery at the end of the year. My work has been slowly moving operations to Mexico, I'm pretty sure they will accelerate that now. I'll keep going there, though, until they tell me to stop. We had an incident on Monday with a lady working on my line, a temp. She suddenly stopped working and was slumping in her chair. It turned out she was passing out from low blood sugar levels: she was diabetic but hadn't been taking her medicine for eight weeks because she couldn't afford it. There are millions of people in the country with the same situation, and I can't see it getting any better for them. Or for us, overall. We shall see.

Election Open Thread
For all of you regulars (and the "irregulars", too), tell us about your voting experience today. Was it crowded, was it quiet? What was your impression of the general atmosphere? Did you see more pro-Kerry people or more pro-Bush people? Let us know!

I'll be going to work in about an hour, and I won't be back by 11:30pm EST, which means that by then we will know either if someone won in a landslide or if we'll be fighting this out through December. Here's what "John" in Pennsylvania had to say:

I went to my polling place (a fire station) at noon. No GW04 in sight. All the fire fighters were for Kerry/Edwards. I'm a new voter and everyone was very helpful. The walk to the station, voting, and the walk back was a total of 30 minutes. I brought 2 new voters with me. Later, the Kerry/Edwards victory party!

So if you're registered go out and vote and tell us what happened there!

Revolutionaries
Well, here we are. After four long years of waiting, we finally have a chance to make a difference. Today is our last chance to begin to reverse the course set thirty years ago by the "conservative" movement. Four years ago, they got what they have always wanted: control of every branch of the government, and a media that's either part of their propaganda machine, or too timid or incompetent to do the kind of reporting that would have stopped these people dead in their tracks. We've seen what they have chosen to do with that power, the question is, do we reward them for it or do we decide that we've had enough and it's time to pull in the reins?

Gene Lyons writes:

What makes this presidential election so crucial isn't merely that it's a referendum on George W. Bush. It also will test the fundamental competence of the American electorate. The Bush presidency hasn't merely failed, its failures have been epic. To award him a second term would be a bad indicator of our democracy's health. By every rational measure, the nation is worse off today than four years ago. Bush is the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a net loss of jobs. Tax cuts for plutocrats and heedless spending have turned budget surpluses into runaway deficits, imperiling the nation's fiscal stability. After vacationing through 9/11, Bush not only bulldozed the country into a needless war with Iraq, but conducted it with supreme incompetence.

I have said similar things, using different words. The rest of the world is waiting. A vote for George W. Bush means more than just "Four More Years", it puts the stamp of approval on the illegal American invasion and occupation of Iraq and whatever invasions follow. A vote for George W. Bush means that we've rejected the entire "rule of law" thing, that our slogan is now officially "might makes right". It validates all the bad things our neighbors believe about us: that we're a mostly bunch of ignorant lowlifes sitting on the most powerful military in the world, a greater threat than a thousand Saddam Husseins. It doesn't matter if Bush gets in fairly, or if they rig the vote, or if we've just been suckered by a media that is run, mainly, by the same corporate thugs that also control the purse strings of the politicians. In the end, it will be our responsibility.

I won't be voting today, because I already did so on Wednesday, Georgia being one of those states that has early voting. I waited on line for three hours to cast a ballot of dubious credibility, as we use the Diebold machines. Remarkably, most people weren't deterred by the long wait, many there felt that this was a pretty important election. My impression from the people in line near me was that they were all Democrats, but that's no surprise considering the part of Atlanta I live in. I saw on the news that the lines were just as long in Cobb County, a haven for Bush cultists, so even assuming the votes will be counted fairly and the results not tampered with, the odds are it will balance out. Outside of Atlanta, the rest of the state is about as red as you can get. To me the relevant votes were for Congress and the Senate. But I will say this, I have never in my life seen such long lines to vote, and I hope that's a good thing.

I was asked by my nemesis BChan what I would do, should Bush get another four years in office. Would I become an "armed revolutionary"? I've got news for him: I already am. My weapons are my voice and the internet which allows it to be heard. A "revolution" is more than just an opposition to an established power, it represents something new. The American Revolution was more than just a revolt against the British, it was about the idea that men could rule themselves. At a time when most of the world was ruled by monarchies, it was a pretty revolutionary idea. The new revolution has already begun. As communication is made easier, people are beginning to see that we have more things in common than we were aware of, and we are beginning to see ourselves as a race as opposed to a group of conflicting nations. The Europeans get it, even Communist China gets it to a certain extent. The people in power in the US today is the last obstacle, if they are thrown down it will open the door to begin the real process of unifying the globe politically and economically.

The important question for myself and for all of us here on "the left" (another term that will begin to lose its meaning as the world unites), is what happens if Kerry wins? I hope we realize that just by winning this election, the radical right in this country will not go away, they'll just fight harder. Some of us, no doubt, will declare victory and go back to not paying attention to politics. We can't allow that to happen. As much talk there has been about how much we have accomplished, we have to realize that we're just at the beginning stages of a movement. The real test will be what is happening twenty or thirty years from now. The conservatives didn't get where they are overnight, they have been building their machine since the mid- 1970's, we have to be prepared to be that patient. Some of us out there (Gov. Dean, for example) understand that. Columnist Paul Krugman also has advice for Kerry, should he win:

I hope the people around [Kerry] understand that this is not politics as we know it. It's not, "OK, well, we won an election. After the election we'll get together and work in a bipartisan way to help the country." [The Republicans] didn't work in a bipartisan way when the United States was attacked. They immediately saw it as a way to achieve political dominance. Kerry has got to understand that he has a window of opportunity to expose what's going on and to rock these people back to the point where we can try to reclaim the normal workings of democracy. Unless there's a true miracle and the Democrats take the House-which is extremely unlikely-it's going to be very bitter political civil war from Day One. The House leadership will try to undermine Kerry. I'm sure they'll try to impeach him almost immediately. On anything.

We can go on and on about Tom DeLay, but the point is Tom DeLay is not an aberrant thing. He's not an accident. The whole thrust of where we've been going for a couple of decades in this country has been towards putting someone like Tom DeLay in a position of great power. So, my column to Kerry, my open letter to him if he wins, will be: Do not be magnanimous. You need to expose and dismantle this machine.

Juan Cole adds this:

The decision between Bush and Kerry will shape the world Americans live in during the next four years. Even though Bush has been called the "CEO President," that isn't how he has behaved. Bush has overthrown two governments and announced the imminent demise of several others. Bush is a revolutionary in Asia, a Robespierre. At least one of Bush's revolutions is now mired in its Terror phase. What a real CEO thinks about Bush is obvious from the Paul O'Neill / Ron Suskind memoir of life on the Bush cabinet. Kerry in contrast is a statesman committed to navigating the status quo without producing unnecessary turbulence...

...The Bush administration is full of revolutionaries. They are shaking up the world by military force. They are playing a role familiar in modern history, pioneered by Napoleon Bonaparte, of using overwhelming military superiority to establish new forms of hegemony by appealing to desires for change among neighboring publics. Bonaparte promised the Italians liberty on the French model, but in fact reduced the Italians to a series of French puppet regimes and then he looted the country. So far Bush's Iraq looks increasingly like Bonaparte's Italy in these regards...

I actually have two major disagreements with this: first that, if Mr. Cole understands anything about how modern CEO's operate, he would see clearly that Bush is acting just like they do. The secretive policy-making, the sucking up of all the wealth to the executive at the expense of the employees, the hostile takeovers, etc. The other disagreement is that there is nothing revolutionary about what Bush is doing, it's the same tired old totalitarianism we have seen time and time again throughout history. What Kerry would try to do, in terms of bringing the world closer together, is the real revolutionary idea, the idea that we are all one people and we should start thinking like that. We are more than just Americans or French or Japanese or Iraqis. We are all humans, and what we have in common is stronger than what sets us apart.

But to answer BChan more directly, if Bush gets another four years, I and the rest of the world are going to find out if these people are as bad as I fear they are. I for one have no intentions of stopping the blog or the radio show, I will not be silenced by anything less than brute force, and while I am not, at present, a threat of any kind to the powers that be, totalitarians despise anyone who speaks out against them. I hope I'm wrong of course, but people who have no qualms about lying about something as serious as war would also have no qualms about tossing me in the slammer as a "threat" to their regime. So in that regard, we shall see. If I turn out to be right, and these guys are as bad as I'm afraid they are, I won't forget the snide remarks and snotty attitude by BChan and his freeper pals. I may forgive, but I will never forget. And should worse come to worse, if I should be imprisoned or otherwise silenced, how many of them would risk their lives to save mine?

Regardless of what happens today, the revolution has already begun.

Open Thread: Show 69
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