The Transpartisan Imperative

[Donnachaidh]

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2011/08/13/the-transpartisan-imperative/

Michael Ostrolenk is one of the people on the right we worked with in order to get Audit the Fed passed. In the video above he recounts how Ron Paul and Alan Grayson in the House, and Jim DeMint and Bernie Sanders in the Senate, were able to work together to successfully fight the lobbying efforts of the Fed, the banks, the White House and party leadership on both sides of the aisle in order to pass a bill that had broad popular support.

As Mike notes, the GAO report that was conducted as a result of the bill’s passage showed that $16 trillion was loaned out to foreign and domestic banks by the Federal Reserve. That report came out in July. You’d think that in the middle of austerity and deficit hysteria the media would have picked up on that, but they didn’t.

When Audit the Fed passed, Chris Hayes said on MSNBC that “something truly remarkable” has happened and that the bill’s passage was “the single greatest act of bipartisanship since Obama took office.” I think Michael’s characterization of “transpartisan” is probably more accurate. ”Bipartisan” has come to mean elites of both parties coming together to screw the public in their own self-interest. Transpartisan, as Michael says, means coming together to fight for shared principles in discrete alliances with people you might otherwise disagree with on other issues.

Transpartisanism is the opposite of tribalism. Tribalism involves appealing to people’s cultural biases to keep them walled off in armed camps, fighting each other so they don’t notice that elites are robbing them blind. It ensures that they will continue to blame each other for their increasingly difficult financial predicaments, and never take aim at their true mutual antagonists even as the economic ground erodes beneath their feet.

More at the link --