Is a New Political System Emerging in This Country?

[kentuck]

http://billmoyers.com/2015/03/25/new-american-order/

<snip>
Have you ever undertaken some task you felt less than qualified for, but knew that someone needed to do? Consider this piece my version of that and let me put what I do understand about it in a nutshell: based on developments in our post-9/11 world, we could be watching the birth of a new American political system and way of governing for which, as yet, we have no name.

And here’s what I find strange: the evidence of this, however inchoate, is all around us and yet it’s as if we can’t bear to take it in or make sense of it or even say that it might be so.

Let me make my case, however minimally, based on five areas in which at least the faint outlines of that new system seem to be emerging: political campaigns and elections; the privatization of Washington through the marriage of the corporation and the state; the de-legitimization of our traditional system of governance; the empowerment of the national security state as an untouchable fourth branch of government; and the demobilization of “we the people.”

Whatever this may add up to, it seems to be based, at least in part, on the increasing concentration of wealth and power in a new plutocratic class and in that ever-expanding national security state. Certainly, something out of the ordinary is underway and yet its birth pangs, while widely reported, are generally categorized as aspects of an exceedingly familiar American system somewhat in disarray.

....much more

[IDemo]

1. a "way of governing for which, as yet, we have no name."

Yet he calls it just three paragraphs later - "a new plutocratic class".

[Triana]

6. It HAS a name...

...FASCISM.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

7. that's my thought too.

Not so new.

[zeemike]

11. A rose by any other name.

Smells the same.

[Midnight Writer]

15. Exactly

Fascism is government run and controlled by big business.

[nxylas]

16. Nobody really knows what fascism is

Ask two political scientists and you'll get three different definitions. But corporatism is certainly a part of it, even if that quote popularly attributed to Mussolini is fictitious.

[sabrina 1]

17. Yes, that is what it is. People are still in denial about it, at least some people are.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. Time for the torches and pitchforks.

[WillTwain]

3. In 2008, I said this madness cannot last another ten years

We have three years for a revolution or I am wrong. Problem is, Hillary will take us long past 2018.

I am in disbelief of the apathetic world we live in. People that are getting their asses handed to them just roll aver and ask for another kick in the ass. Unprecedented.

[tech3149]

5. The apathy or lack of involvement is no accident or secondary incedental effect

It is a long planned and well implemented systematic marginalization of the average citizen from the political system and its effect on their lives.
Back in the day of party machine politics is probably where it started when you had to know someone and ingratiate yourself to local political leaders to have any influence. Enough people exerting enough influence at the local level would push those policies up the food chain toward state and national policy. That worked pretty well up to a point but it started to change with the atomization of the citizen from the community. Part of it was implemented by the suburban sprawl and relocation for employment rather than feeling some rooting in a home place. That was a result of a wonderful sales pitch of expectations and chasing better or existing employment. The financial strangulation of the working class aided that by not allowing the time or energy to be involved. Another factor was the influence of television and then cable to allow us to further separate from the community.
I'd put the beginning mostly on the shoulders of Lewis Powell and his memorandum to the US Chamber of Commerce. That paranoid reaction to the social movements and desire for personal growth of the 50's and 60's laid the blueprint for what we have seen since. The capital class were scared shitless and responded with brutal force to extremely effective results.
Then you have the rise of the professional political consultants who prompted the further divorcement of politics from policy aided by a media system being more and more focused on profit over quality of content.
In effect we've been manipulated into positions of complacency, despair, fear, futility, and cynicism and unfortunately most of us don't see through it until that one thing that affects us personally hits that breaking point.
I feel it's very near.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

8. saving to read this later.

Unfortunately I can't keep my eyes open any longer!

[tech3149]

9. No problem, I'm about two beers to late that's probably why I'm so verbose! n/t

[WillTwain]

12. Individualism

has been a big part of the deceit. From hollywood to Washington, we are sold the bullshit about the self-made man, the love-wolf vigilante and the Horatio Alger shit.

Combine this with the enticing idea that government is evil, which makes a great foil for people looking for someone or something to blame their failures on and the marketing machine on the right has done a spectacular job of creating 150 million monsters.

Eliminating the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 was huge,too.

Thanks for your your wisdom.

[jtuck004]

14. They are already being carried, but by the opposing side. n/t

[kentuck]

4. Also, I think the Netanyahu speech was a turning point in our foreign policy...

...and our military strategies. We have already become a military state. Generals are held in high regard and are seldom prosecuted, even if entrusted with the highest secrets that may have been exposed?

But it is not just the military. It is the oligarchy. They operate by the golden rule. He who has the gold makes the rules.

The common folk are too ignorant to become informed and the rest are conspiring against their own best interests...

[Rex]

10. No, the system has possibly been in place since Nixon.

The owners don't care who is pitted again whom. All that matters is that they stay on top of the pile. We've had a plutocracy for 35 years now. The only reason we even talk about it today, is because of the internet. Just THINK if we had no WWW and still relied on the M$M for all our news?

How much of the country would be brainwashed, as opposed to just the moronic GOP minions? Enough probably to make voting a moot point at best.

[zeemike]

13. I think they have turned politics into a reality show.

Which is enough to make voting a moot point anyway.
And that would explain Cruz and Trump, because every reality show has to have the drama of people you hate and people you love...required for lots of drama.

[hedda_foil]

20. I think it has deeper roots, going back to the post reconstruction era at least. Perhaps earlier.

Think of the railroad barons and our pals, the Wall Street bankers, who crashed the economy every few years. Think of Andrew Carnegie, the steel king, whose steel built the rails that J.P. Morgan and friends financed. And the dukes of coal, that kept the Carnegie works going, and their miners fighting and dying to unionize against the peonage of their working conditions and pay (Interesting factoid: Carnegie sold his company to J.P. Morgan in 1901 for $480 million[3] (in 2015, $13.6 billion), creating the U.S. Steel Corporation. (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie )

Consider Andrew Jennings Bryan's campaigns against the "cross of gold" that made money (and farm loans, in particular) so tight that small farms by the hundreds of thousands were repossessed by Wall Street bankers, throwing farmers and their families off their land and out of their homes.

T.R. improved the status of the citizenry by busting the trusts, imposing health, sanitation and safety regulations, etc. Then after WWI, the corrupt Republicans took over and ran the country off the rails and into the great depression.

FDR brought us back from the brink of a socialist revolution, and saved capitalism in this country. And look how he was paid back by the industrialist's planned coup and later trading with the enemy. And right up front and accounted for were the Dulles Brothers and Prescott Bush and Brown Brothers Harriman banking house. Notable employees included George Herbert Walker and his son-in-law Prescott Bush.

Immediately post war, The Dulles boys took over American foreign policy, founded the secretive national security state, kick-started the cold war, hired Hitler's scientists and spies, brought down democracies around the world, and founded the permanent MIC.

Eisenhower, JFK and RFK tried to stop it, And we know what happened to the Kennedy brothers for presuming to call halt.

Now think about the years and elections that ensued. Most everyone misses the fact that Republican and Democratic candidates were decided upon in smoke filled, all male conclaves, led by party bosses who were often none too honest themselves. The capo di tutti capos in those days were none other than Averell Harriman for the Dems and Prescott Bush for the Republicans. Remember that old Prescott hand picked Nixon. As for Ave, his blessing was required before any candidate could be nominated. In fact, his influence continued long after his death, in the person of his wife, the gorgeous Pamela Churchill Harriman, formerly the daughter in law of Winston Churchill. I recall either TIME or Newsweek mentioning that she had the final say in the vetting of Bill Clinton.

The lawyers and bankers who were charged with trading with the enemy, even after war had begun, were in charge of the republic. And we all know the rest of the story at this point.

I have begun to think that our heroes were anomalies in the smooth running of a corrupt oligarchic state.

[chervilant]

22. After I responded to your query in another OP,

I found this post. Would you please repost this as an OP?

[hedda_foil]

23. Thanks! I'd be glad to.

[captainarizona]

18. 100,000 minority kids turn 18(voting age)every month! and republicans know it!

If "they" controlled the votes they would not need voter suppression. "They" would encourage everyone to vote if your votes didn't count. They do so"they" need vote suppression. "They" would like you to vote for them ;but if you won't "they" would rather you not vote at all!

[blackspade]

19. The warning claxons should be sounding....

But corporate driven budget cuts have cut the wires......

[chervilant]

21. Would you please repost this?

I think it's telling that this OP got so few responses (even more telling that I can only see half of them). I wonder why the apathetic among us are so quick to deny how bad things have gotten...