Living in the Country you Have...
'There is noting more difficult to handle, more doubtful of success, and more dangerous to implement than initiating change. Innovation makes enemies of all who prospered under the old regime'
Niccolo Machiavelli
One week in...and all illusions about unity and collegiality are beginning to disintegrate.
Minority Leader, John Boener, (GOP-R, Ohio) feels Republicans will oppose the $825M economic stimulus plan on the account that it has 'a lot of wasteful 'Washington' spending padding the bureaucracy' (not explaining what form of spending might preferably be voted upon in Washington) and '...given the concerns that we have over the size of the package, we don't think it's going to work'.
Boener, a hard core advocate of 'Trickle-Down' economic policies under the Bush administration that focused on Tax cutting and private-sector deregulation has plenty of experience with what 'doesn't work', as evidenced by the wreckage of his own state. Cleveland at half of it's 1950 Capacity, Youngstown a vast ghetto of jobless, addicted victims of Trickle-Down, promised to them by a generation of GOP candidates who could rely upon their votes. Desperate for relief, Ohio turned to Obama and his promise to derail such thinking. Boener says 'wait a minute, we still have to do it the same way we've been doing it'.
He's an idiot
And, when 2010 arrives, the people of Ohio will send him on his merry way and, perhaps, if he is the dedicated public servant he purports himself to be - he will get his ASS over to Youngstown and tell his former constituents that the Rubber and Auto plants are NEVER coming back and the Government does not have enough money to fix all their problems, but if they forget all the nonsense that Boener, his idol, Reagan and his buddy, Dubya peddled on them the past three decades and GO TO SCHOOL, STOP SPENDING MONEY ON THINGS OTHER THAN ESSENTIALS and PUT DOWN HARD DRUGS and WEAPONS, that their lives MIGHT get better in the 21st Century World that is being born.
Or they can do nothing to change their outlook, their world view, their economic hopes, dreams and desires and then they might as well stay high, because they will be assured of dying in misery.
John McCain, who is NOT an idiot, but is also not the slightest bit conversant with Economics, opined that 'We need to make Tax cuts permanent, and insure that there will be no new taxes', not deviating even a scintilla from the Mantra of the deposed jackass - the same surefire strategy that served him so poorly this October.
McCain, would be well served to ignore the Boeners of the world (funny!) and put his back into the real-world topics where his expertise is strong and desperately needed (Foreign Affairs, Military personnel). He has nothing left to pretend to the Conservative caucus, who have nothing left to bargain with but the rapidly diminishing calendar days on their Washington lives.
Is this response surprising? No.
Disappointing? Irrelevant.
It is what it is. What is has always been. The elevation of selfish considerations over communal well-being. It was the reason that so many of us desired the forged-in-fire elements of Hillary Clinton for President and why we worried that the new President, brilliant, thoughtful and deeply in tune with America's ailments as he is, would be in 'deep' dealing with antagonism of entrenched interest. But then he 'put aside childish things' that appeared to be guiding much of his campaign architecture and forged a deep Cabinet with all the relevant experience required, unlike another brilliant outsider who came to Washington with a mandate for change and found the opposition remained...opposed, relied on team of novices, kept an arrogant 'above the fray' mentality and was drummed out of Washington and into infamy for his efforts, a guy named Jimmy Carter, our 39th President.
To this day, Carter and his former advisors never cop to having made mistakes, instead blaming it all upon the 'toxic climate of Washington'. To this day, despite the lessons of Post Reagan America, they remain so parochial and arrogant to have assumed winning 50%+ of Cast Votes somehow signifies a broad, unifying energy centered upon the protagonist.
That is meaningless.
It was in 1976, it is in 2009.
Tens of Millions of Americans voted for George W. Bush. Many of these same voters are enamored of Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee and will vote for them in 2012 NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS.
Oil & Gas, Insurance, Banking, Medical, Paper, Defense and Auto executives whose businesses will be changed by the coming Global and Government changes will oppose those changes, broadly desired by the electorate and needed by an honest review of the evidence, NO MATTER WHAT THE TRUTH IS.
We are 300 Million, in total. But the Global arena, the enlightenment and the current administration are not the motivating principle for at LEAST 100 Million and, for those who came of age in a Post Reagan world and who have been laden with Feudal dogma about taxes, faith, immigrants, globalization, the U.N., race, sexuality...the leap to the 21st Century is going to be too challenging, too revolutionary, too displacing. It is those folks that Boener and McCain hope to woo, one last time, against all odds...to drag us backward and comfort us with lies about the joys of the 19th Century, the '50s, the '80s...and how the damages of the '00s were really all the fault of 'that woman's husband' - the same nonsensical conceit mined by Obama to peel off some of their votes.
After all, if some people are BOUND AND DETERMINED to maintain their fantasies, who is a politician not to capitalize upon them?
We live HERE. We are not a 'W-E' at all, anymore than Lincoln faced, or LBJ. Change that is good for ALL of us is going to be bad for MANY of us, and those people are going to fight like hell to keep it from happening and that is why this is going to come down to what it always does...
a FIGHT.
Because the only people who are able to 'put aside childish things' are those who perceive that doing so is in their OWN best interests. As long as some Americans continue to cling more closely to their fantasies, the more of them are going to be left behind.
It can't be helped. Change hurts, but NOT changing, as we have been trying - hurts WORSE.
A lot has been made by the media and element of the Obama campaign about the FDR parallels, what they have NOT said is that FDR put not a moments thought into the coaxing of enemies, he BLUDGEONED them - hoisting them on their own nonsense and hypocrisy. Obama is smooth and he is right to give the opposition their rope, but the lines are already being drawn, here at week one.
Guru is hoping that someone in his Office hands him FDR's quote from his Second Inauguration, if he adheres to its principles FEARLESSLY, he can book his own;
'I'd should like it said that of my first administration, that in it, the forces of selfishness and lust for power met their Match. I should like it to be said of my second administration that these forces met their Master'.
If Obama succeeds, it will not be with a vast 'Group Hug' from the displaced interests, any more than the South rewarded LBJ and the Democrats with support for removing segregation...it will be rather from having 'earned the hatred of entrenched greed' (FDR).
Smiles are nice, nice is nice.
This is not the time for nice.
