We're All Outsiders Now - The Real Civil War

[arendt]

We're All Outsiders Now - The Real Civil War
by arendt

Some people say that it is merely technological maturity that has empowered
the massive Internet donations to both outsider organizations (MoveOn, TBTM)
and outsider candidates (Dean, Kucinich). This essay argues, instead, that the
US middle class, with its back to the financial and intellectual wall, has finally
decided to use its money or lose it.

They can see the handwriting on the outsourcing contracts. They can see the
vaporized tech and financial jobs. They can see the deliberate dual-level
consumer marketplace of Nieman-Marcus and WalMart with damn little
in between.

But, if it were just the economy, I don't think they would have been so energized.
It is the absolute destruction of the political and legal rule system that has frightened
them. It is the "don't prosecute" card given to Kenny Boy Lay, it is the arbitrary
detention of citizens and the one-sided prosecutions of "some" terrorists, it is
the deliberate lying about WMDs and the media kiss-off to that and to the
Plame Affair, and it is many other assaults on the Constitution and the traditional
politics of compromise - the sum total of all this presents a pattern that sets off
all the alarms among Robert Reich's class of "symbolic analysts".

After two decades of GOP/corporate downsizing, all that is left of the post-WW2
middle class is this educated, professional elite. The key word is educated. These
people think critically for a living. They find the "infotainment"-ized, post-Fairness
Doctrine, FCC-concentrated media to be nothing but a 24/7 propaganda machine
for the GOP. These people also invented the Internet (no slight to Al Gore who did
promote it) and use it in their work. They saw that there was a possibility for honest
discussion, honest reporting, and genuine political organizing on the Internet.
And, they saw every other traditional avenue of such organizing, including
the go-along-to-get-along punching bags in the Democratic National Committee,
had been bought, co-opted, intimidated, or put out of business by an increasingly
belligerent and openly right-wing corporate mafia. These are people that succeeded
by playing by the rules; and they are really pissed at the liars, cheats, mountebanks,
and ignorant zealots who have been let lose on us by Bush.

500,000 of those educated middle class people turned out in NYC in the February
cold to say they didn't want war. And you had better believe that those same
people went home and saw the absolute suppression of that demonstration by the
corporate media. They saw the corporate media war-cheerleader Clear Channel
labelling them traitors for exercising their rights. And what they saw convinced them
they were now outsiders in their own country.

Of course, when the media spins this, the middle class morphs into those
spoiled-rotten, ex-hippiie, boomers, who are all drug-using traitors (unlike
Rush Limbaugh and Neil Bush). The same spin labels the arguably conservative
Howard Dean to be a screaming 60s draft-dodging hippie while giving AWOL
shrub free publicity for GI Joe photo ops. But, while all successful caricatures have
a kernel of truth, the idea that only whining granola-eaters are affected by the
neocon looting and militarization of America simply does not resonate.

The Internet money is not just boomer money, it is money from the entire
educated class of this increasingly benighted country, which sees itself cast
in the totally shocking role of outsider. The money and the volunteers come
from teenage hackers and from retired Army brass. These resources go only to
the outsiders, not to everyone.

The idea that there is some technical or marketing magic needed to raise money
on the Internet from committed political contributors is yet another media smokescreen.
Hell, Jerry Falwell has been raising small contributions for decades, long before the
Internet. Today's outsider money comes from true believers in stodgy old middle-class
democracy. It goes to those genuinely fighting for middle class interests instead of
positioning themselves, like Joe Lieberman, to shaft the middle class in the name of
war and fundamentalism.

So, as in the Viet Nam debacle, the way to throw the bums out lies in the fight
among the hegemonic classes. The Bush Administration represents economic
Neanderthals in the extract and pollute industries. The professional middle class
resistance lies in the technologists who profited from the 90s bubble.

As in Viet Nam, whoever wins, don't expect the second coming of Franklin Roosevelt.
The best you can expect is to go back to an America where the laws have to be obeyed
by the GOP, just like everyone else, where the budget gets balanced by making
the corporations and the rich pay their fair share, where even GOP crooks get prosecuted,
where government money does not go directly to Churches, and where the Bill of
Rights remains the law of the land. Internationally, the best you can expect is that
the US turns Iraq over to the UN and stops destabilizing the entire world.

That's why the whole orchestrated firestorm over the "Civil War" inside the Democratic
Party is just another example of corporate media projection and divide-and-rule.
The real civil war is between people who respect our Constitution and those who
trample on it daily.

At this point, it will be a "hard slog" just to get back to those basic values;
fundamentalist political terrorists, funded by the shadowy "Our Guys Dough"
network will be sniping at our soldiers constantly. So, anyone looking for the
guillotine to be set up in the Place de la Concorde will have to go to Paris for
the forseeable future. But, don't throw away those knitting needles, there are
some neocons that need a sweater to keep their necks warm for the time being.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Good grief

you nailed it, I have been saying for some time now that we live
in a COLD CIVIL WAR and that I fear it will turn hot before long.

The Right fears anything that has to make them obbey the law

They are above the law as good crony capitalists are

But I would not discount that posibiltiy either, of a hot civil
war and the guillotine as it were. Though at that moment, all
bets are off.