Smash the Control Machine

[Nuclear Unicorn]

The GOP make awesome machine politicians; it's part of their nature. They organize well for specific purposes: the military, corporations, churches, etc. That allows them to organize well for other specific purposes such as elections.

This is not to be confused with the more individualist-minded conservative-libertarians who vote GOP.

In contrast the Democratic party was a camp for the refugees of GOP policy and realpolitik. It was a place for those who were without a voice to gather and combine their voices. It provided an organized structure but the lines between organized structures and machines is a thin one.

The attraction to Hillary is that she is a machine politician in the mold of Tammany Hall and Chicago. Since Bill's administration they have endeavored to engineer the structure of the Democratic party apparatus into a thing that doesn't represent Democratic voters as much as it serves their ambitions.

When the election approached the question was put before us: How do we plan to beat the GOP machine?

It's a fair question and it's a frightening prospect considering they made it through 8 years of Bush without ever having been held to account. They are formidable and to not be concerned about them would be foolhardy.

So, we were told the answer to their machine politicians was our own machine politician and that, naturally, was Hillary. Not that any other answer was possible because her machine was engineered only to produce that singular answer. And produce it, it has.

Heck, in the early days of the primary season her supporters even played her cronyism to corporate interests as a virtue. "Well, how else do you expect her to match GOP moneyed interests?" they sniffed.

But then came Trump. For all his barking baboon buffoonery he was one thing: Not a machine politician. In fact, it was his barking baboon buffoonery that showed him to not be a part of the machine. The GOP machine reviles him. Nobody thought he could clinch the nomination -- but he did.

Now we're stuck with a machine politician geared up to fight another machine politician except there's no machine for her to fight and what's worse is the Trump victory shows the electorate is in the mood to dismantle machines. The barking baboon is the monkey wrench the voters intend to throw into the machine. I'm not saying their choice of monkey wrench is good -- it may be effective but it definitely isn't good no matter how badly the machine needs to be dismantled.

So here we are.

We either back the machine, thus further entrenching it into our lives and political structure, ossifying it for the foreseeable future with its corporatism, wars of aggression, corruption, cronyism and disregard for the law or we stand by as a barking baboon riding a nihilistic wave anti-everything brings us God only knows what.

[Tal Vez]

1. The winner in November will be propelled by a broad coalition of voters

and if someone wants to call that coalition a machine, I have no objection. As I think Trump will learn, a narrow coalition will not succeed.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

2. Courting RW corporatist votes by trumpeting the TPP, MIC and dissing single-payer

now enjoys the euphemism of being a "broad coalition."

Smash the control machine.

[Tal Vez]

3. I wish that we could have single payer tomorrow.

It would make sense for every patient.

The problem, of course, is getting it through a Republican Congress. So long as we have a Republican Congress, there will be no single payer health care system in the United States.

Until we have a majority in both bodies of the Congress, the best that we can probably do is to improve the Affordable Health Care Act. We still have too many uninsured people out there, people who cannot access the health care system in any normal way.

Personally, I believe that Clinton has the experience and the talent to get some improvements through Congress. It is one of the main reasons that I voted for her.

I think it's likely that we will eventually have a single-payer system, but in the meantime, there are people who desperately need the kind of help that we can get through the Congress that we are presently stuck with.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

4. This tired crap -- again.

Smash the control machine.

[Tal Vez]

5. Smash the control machine sounds cool,

but if you try to put it to music you're going to need some rhyming words.

I've always had health insurance and I consider myself fortunate in that regard. But, there are a lot of people in this country who have health care needs that are not being met because of our screwed up system. And, while that issue might seem like "tired crap" to some people, it can be a life or death issue for the people who are adversely affected by our crappy system.

Sometime, if you get a chance, maybe you can explain specifically what it is you have in mind by "smash the control machine." Often, it's the details that create the difficulty. But, in the meantime, good luck with it.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

6. Please don't get pedantic, acting as if health insurance is the same as health care

And we're not going to get any more votes than we had in 2010, not for generations.

And, no, there will be no reforms because the law is set up to preserve insurance companies by padding their profits.

And, no, the candidate who is bought and paid for by those taxpayer subsidized corporations will not be the agent of change.

[840high]

7. There are many people

from both sides of the aisle who will vote to smash the machine.