Whats happening with Billmon, writing at 4:30 AM?.
Has insomnia ?.

Posted by: curious | Jun 8 2005 12:10 utc | 4

It’d be easy to be a wiseass n say “someone slip Billmon a prozac” but he’s there and if that’s what he feels then they’ll be substance to it. I hope it’s not that simple though definately change will only come by the introduction of a third force and short term the Dems would benefit from a rightist 3rd force but long term it would kill them.
So there must be another way. I plain just don’t understand this religion thing but I’m sure for many it must be a fad. I haven’t seen any evidence to show that this new morality has had any impact at all on crime, violence, and abortion rates are still the highest in the OECD. So what’s happening? Surely a lot of people are going to clue up to the fact following some superstition hasn’t changed their lives one jot in fact for many it will have got worse since these organised religions seem devoted to separating ordinary people from their earnings. That’s why other cultures have rejected religion so why would it happen diferently in the US?
One too many men are going to come home to find the preacher with his feet under the kitchen table. Too many kids are going to remember some holy roller making their childhood a misery and too many women are going to get sick of seeing 10% of their hard earned cash keeping some fat bottomed reverend’s wife in bling.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jun 8 2005 12:56 utc | 6

I’m glad he said, “American voters”. The voters will follow when the culture changes.

Posted by: samiam | Jun 8 2005 13:36 utc | 8

Spooky.
That was one of the most quietly chilling opinion pieces I’ve read in awhile. Mostly because it only teased out what I’ve suspected; that a solid majority of Americans have for lack of a better word gone bad.
No wonder Bush and Putin get along so well they understand each others culture.

Posted by: Scott McArthur | Jun 8 2005 13:55 utc | 10

Good Analysis, Billmon:
A more likely result is a straight-line depreciation of bothparties, with nonaligned voters increasingly inclined to say a pox on the entire political class. This could even lead to the rise of another Perot-style “radical centrist” third party. Which might not be a bad thing for the Dems, since it would probably shave more votes off the GOP. After all, that’s how the Dems won their last two presidential victories.
There has been much written on this site about how entrenched the Right has become.
And I don’t buy it at all.
I worked in my state in 92 to get Perot on the ballot. It was amazing the anger. People would probably have crawled a half-mile over busted glass to sign the petition. And until perot exploded, in July or August, he was leading in the polls and still got 19% of the vote in November.
In short, any credible candidate with 1/2 again as much money as either of the major parties, to spend on a presidential election, could, in my opinion, win going away.
Draw in the middle with serious economic and defense policies, get the NASCAR Rethug set with economic populism and anti-NAFTA-ism, and get most everybody else with a national health insurance program and protection of Social Security.
Put a Wes Clark or John Edwards mask on George Soros, and let the fun begin.

Posted by: FlashHarry | Jun 8 2005 14:13 utc | 12

@beq:
Comrade Beria, who visits this site occasionally, could probably find a teaching position for St. Ralph in NE Siberia.

Posted by: FlashHarry | Jun 8 2005 14:27 utc | 14

It is centralized power that people vote against.

Posted by: samiam | Jun 8 2005 14:55 utc | 16

Billmon, Another great analysis.
Yes. There is a lot of anger. I remember the support for Perot before he imploded. But, the GOP have managed to divert it away from themselves by lies, propaganda and religious fervor. Environmentalists are blamed for the lost jobs and economic hardships. 9-11 and rally around flag patriotism gave GOP control of the Federal Government. Secular humanists are identified appeasers of Islamic terrorism.
The real cause of the economic pain in America are the capitalists and globalization that shipped all the decent jobs overseas. But, Democrats can’t use this populist theme because they are addicted to corporate campaign monies. The Democrats have sunk into a meaningless funk. Today’s highlight: Howard Dean saying Republicans are “pretty much a white, Christian party” and New Mexico’s Democratic governor, Bill Richardson, chiming back that Dean isn’t the party’s spokesman. Duh, what is the Chairman of the DNC suppose to be?
The next political party has to find the cultural theme that can draw together Secular Humanists and Christian Relativist verses GOP’s Cultural and Religious Absolutists.

Posted by: Jim S | Jun 8 2005 15:05 utc | 18

How can anyone make a pertinent decision about something he or she doesn’t understand? And who, other than a trained philosopher, can understand something like a “concept” that he or she hasn’t actually experienced? Not a new problem, this! If I understand the word “million,” as in the phrase “$1 million,” it’s because a “million” is a finite multiple of my annual wage. Not so the word “billion”, which represents an infinite multiple thereof.

Posted by: alabama | Jun 8 2005 15:52 utc | 20

PrahaPartizan asks whether Billmon is describing the establishment of a fascist state. My thoughts exactly. Americans get the government they deserve. We can chide people for failing to vote their self-interest, but they still gravitate toward the GOP and away from the Democratic Party.
I keep reading analysis after analysis about how the Democrats are losing women, married people with kids, and working class white males. Given the right-wing propaganda and the lapdog media over the past few years, is it any wonder?
But as Billmon noted in a recent post, we can’t just blame the Democrats and the media. We are learning that stupid, gullible, uniformed Americans are as susceptible to the lures of fascism as much as anyone else has been down through the years.
And as Billmon seems to suggest in this new posting, this can all go one of two ways. Right now, I’m afraid it’s going to turn very ugly.

Posted by: Phil from New York | Jun 8 2005 16:06 utc | 22

The scariest point to me is the three most respected institutions: the military, religious groups, and the police. All inherently conservative, coercive, and anti-democratic. That is freaking frightening. What more do you need for fascism than to have people turn to the solutions that these three offer? 1939 Spain probably had the same top three.
But one thing I do not believe is that religion is stronger now than it was previously. Poll after poll says that U.S. church attendance has actually been steadily declining for at least four decades (I’ve read a lot of such polls over the past months – then googled today to find a good link to insert here, but opted to recommend that others google it to see for themselves the wide range of polls that agree on this issue). The problem is not increasing religiousity, but the types of churches the declining number of faithful go to (increasingly conservative), and the increasing open alignment between the fascists and the conservative churches (viz. the Catholic Church since JPII). So while one religious viewpoint is more politically powerful in the US now than since the days of Increase Mather – religious sentiment itself is not flourishing. Fundamentalism is not the path a vibrantly burgeoning religion naturally takes – it is the reflexive lashing-out of belief systems under tremendous stress, the spasming of religion on its death bed. It would be a mistake to think that superstition is actually, in the long term, turning back the tide that has been receding since the Enlightenment — although the fundies might well take us all with them when their religion finally gives up the (holy) ghost.

Posted by: NickM | Jun 8 2005 16:52 utc | 24

I’m puzzled. To my untutored eye, I would assume that Bush’s overall approval rating would be close to 40% but I would be wrong. In the same Washington Post/ABC poll, 48% approve how Bush is doing his job. Bush has his best approval rating on the war on terror but the same poll shows that only 12% feel that is a top priority; the economy, Iraq, health care and Social Security all are ranked ahead of the WOT.
So, where is Bush getting that extra 8%?

Posted by: Steve J. | Jun 8 2005 17:34 utc | 26

the GOP are criminals and the dems do nothing. the big difference between the two is that bush flaunts his corporate bias. both parties are corporate whores. if they weren’t they would do something for the little guy. it hasn’t really happened for 70 years. a third party/real choice would be the best thing in the long run.

Posted by: lenin’s ghost | Jun 8 2005 18:04 utc | 28

My theory on why class warfare isn’t working politically for Democrats, for what it’s worth, is that even the poorest Americans have much more material wealth than a majority of the globe’s citizens, and, they know it.
Once the sharing starts [or at least real free trade], taken to its logical global limits, all or most Americans would be correct in presuming that they would be materially worse off. And as anyone who has witnessed “spoiled brattery” at work, sharing is not a facet of behavior preferred by even the poorest spoiled brat once the temporary initial benefit of the sharing has worn off.
Republicans have no electoral problem with class warfare however. What spoiled brat wouldn’t leap at the chance to glom onto everything in sight?

Posted by: bcf | Jun 8 2005 18:33 utc | 30

Part of the problem is that the Republicans have managed to co-opt the liberal heritage of the nation and transformed it into an instrument of economic conquest. The central message of spreading freedom and democracy, newly annointed with holy water, is one most Americans are at pains to disagree with, so give the benifit of the doubt to Bush and put their faith in front of self interest. Commitment then works as a badge of faith expressed as loyality to the overall mission, in effect reducing the world to black and white –” with us or against us” — a viscious circle tautology that further centralizes power through misology. The only hope for the Democrats is in their history (being buried as we speak) as the only real harbingers of such freedom and democracy as fought for and accomplished as a fact esconsed in legislative record and law. Until the Democrats understand their legasy is intrinsically bound to the left, they will go the way of the unions under Reagan and the 80’s.

Posted by: anna missed | Jun 8 2005 18:45 utc | 32

I live in a Red State and a lot of people here believe that politicans don’t have anything to do with the economy. It is the free market and personal responsibility that determine your economic destiny.
The Dems need to get the message out that their programs would actually help Americans. Are Dems actually interested in the economic welfare of Americans? I see very little evidence of it. Look at Dem support of the Bankruptcy Bill. Clinton did a lot of damage here with NAFTA, etc. If Clinton really wanted a decent health insurance program, why did he put his wife in charge of it and not some respected personage with a long pedigree in such matters?
It seems to me that a third party would be the way to go here. Something along the lines of the old Progressive Party.

Posted by: la | Jun 8 2005 19:45 utc | 34

Billmon is quite right about the tribal aspect of voting behavior–and much else in his analysis of the American voter. But there is one glaring weakness in the Republican approach. Mass culture with its leering tits and ass and phony populism is in direct contradiction to Christian fundamentalism. Most voters don’t know how much the Christian right wants to censor its favorite mass culture products—not to speak of controlling sexual behavior and our dying beds.
Although I find much of mass culture repugnant, I do think we need to defend the rights of people to watch what they like—and live the way they choose–without gov’t interference. This simple message puts us on the side of personal freedom—a potent issue in this country, especially white males. We need to depict modern Republicans as nosy, small-minded peeping Toms. Intuitively, the average person already senses that the Christian Right doesn’t approve of most of us. Use it against them by caricaturing and making fun of them, and do it relentlessly.

Posted by: michael blaine | Jun 9 2005 10:24 utc | 36

I can only think of one active politician who fits that bill — and it ain’t Hillary!
Amendment XXII No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.
Sigh.
Although I guess I should be careful what I wish for. Without the 22nd Amendent, the corpse of Ronald Reagan would probably still be president.

Posted by: Billmon | Jun 9 2005 17:54 utc | 38