if they win, to use their victories to advance the policies that they believe are best for the country.
that’s a curious goal, given all we know about the micro-distance in ideas separating the two parties. in order to justify a belief dems are an alternative, we’d need to know what alternatives are posed by the “opposing” party:
iraq: no difference. in fact, dems might exacerbate war by proving mettle to “fight it right”
iran: possible difference, but any course change will be too late. Bush is likely to act before midterms
domestic policy: faced w/ mounting deficits, dems will scramble to patch-up welfare state. but the damage is done; immigration: xenophobia works, no change there; employment: symbolic increase in min. wage; heathcare: nothing, status quo.
“investigations”: just enough to demonstrate the illusion of opposition.
under these circumstances, a dem congress will all but assure a republican victory in 08.
only the growing contempt of voters and nattering left can create a difference between the two parties. let the fascists hold the shitbag until “the people” decide to make a lovely ruin of what remains our democracy.

Posted by: slothrop | May 14 2006 16:04 utc | 4

no. by all means, vote republican.

Posted by: slothrop | May 14 2006 16:16 utc | 6

So Sloth, you think that the SDP and Centre parties were just about as bad as those Nazis?
God knows I hated LBJ. But the passage of the voting rights act and the minimal enforcement of civil rights laws made a positive difference in the lives of millions. Was LBJ sufficiently better than Nixon/Goldwater to make it worth it? Over time, I’ve become convinced that the minor differences argument is an excuse for continued defeat and irresponsibility. I’m not comfortable with that opinion – which makes the invasion of Vietnam part of a better alternative – but the “don’t worry about lunch until the revolution” argument seems even worse.

Posted by: citizen k | May 14 2006 18:06 utc | 8

and, by the sound of your voice, it seems to me you also see the need for more certainty and less irresolution in our “politics.” the dems need to die their dlc death. the sooner the better.

Posted by: slothrop | May 14 2006 18:31 utc | 10

Nixon as Sulla, the would-be dictator, destroyer of the Republic, who resigned, and the Republic appeared to live. Thirty years later, Bush the Great plays at being the new Alexander, the new Pompey in the Middle East – or perhaps he is Crassus, whose power rested on his image and wealth, until he invaded in the desert, where the Empire-Republic’s tactics failed in the face of the indigenous Parthians’ knowledge of the workings of warfare there.
Clinton, either, as the other half of the Pompey/Crassus rivalry. They hate each other, but as part of the triumvirate they can split the government. Personal animosity and differences in style, more than substance.
Meanwhile, the Republic, its institutions designed for a city, for a handful of states, living by the highest moral standards for its own citizens, can’t handle the pressures of being a ruthlessly expansionistic empire. The sheer power, the amounts of money, of exploitation required to maintain the empire cause the electoral stakes to be high enough that the government is essentially paralyzed. Elections are mostly a sham, but just enough still up for grabs that the citizens stay interested. Bullying is the political order of the day, with paralysis the only counter-threat an opposition can propose. Impeach Reagan! Impeach Clinton! Impeach Bush! Use the nuclear option!
John McCain is a mighty sad Cato, but Tom Delay can play Cataline on Broadway.
All that remains is the last of the triumvirate. Whither Caesar? Where is the man to stab through the last shambles of our tottering Republic? An Empire needs an Emperor, after all.

Posted by: Rowan | May 14 2006 18:59 utc | 12

Rowan: That’s so pre-911. We have skipped forward to Nero without all that tedious shilly-shallying. You’re doing a heckuva job, Tigellinus.

Posted by: citizen k | May 14 2006 20:31 utc | 14

I give as much credit to the early Romans as I do to the early Americans. Neither was “nice”. Yet both have/had institutions which, for their citizens, were worthy, and seem to be collapsing under the weight of empire.

Posted by: Rowan | May 14 2006 21:14 utc | 16

@Rowan and Mart– I mean, citizen k:

No, the point is that the Romans started off with a city that required military expansion. Throughout the history of America, there have been points at which American expansionism/militarism could have been stopped, or have temporarily been stopped. Not so ancient Rome. From the first we know of them (from the beginning, in fact, if you believe their own legends), Rome would have collapsed if it had not constantly sent out soldiers, killed or enslaved neighbors. raped and looted. There is an unaccountable tendency for people to think the Romans had these wonderful institutions which were destroyed over time. Sorry, no. The Romans were a bunch of vicious bastards who constantly overran people more advanced than themselves.

Posted by: The Truth Gets Vicious When You Corner It | May 14 2006 21:47 utc | 18

the Cleopatran Peoples Party?
Welcome back citizen k; I always appreciate your literary and historical expertise.
Were you quoting from T.S. Eliot’s Ode to Conquest there at the last?

Posted by: Groucho | May 15 2006 0:42 utc | 20

Rowan: Kos may have a sort of orthodoxy, but it’s not very leftist in any sense I understand except in the sense of Republican demagogues (if “sense” can be used in that construction). John Dewey may be the forgotten patron saint of Kos. To me, “leftist” has lost most of its meaning in political philosophy and now describes a kind of social tendency plus some nostalgia for Marxian certainty. It’s weird that we still try to use the seating of the French revolutionary legislature to describe a political world that has changed fundamentally a number of times in the past 2 centuries.

Posted by: citizen k | May 15 2006 2:35 utc | 22

john dewey kicks ass. he was a leftist, if by that we mean he mapped the terrain of freedom damaged by a civilization of factories and too many publics. besides emerson, america never produced a greater philosopher.
his attacks on capitalism were relentless in everything from the early education critique to the magnum opus experience & nature to the decisive polemics like individualism old & new. if he had a fault, his pragmatism’s normative move was to believe that good education would create a world w/out an aspiration for capital accumulation and instrumental greed.
we’d all be well-off to reread the man.

Posted by: slothrop | May 15 2006 2:53 utc | 24

Okay, we were going somewhere there before the crap about Rome etc.

So Sloth, you think that the SDP and Centre parties were just about as bad as those Nazis?
God knows I hated LBJ. But the passage of the voting rights act and the minimal enforcement of civil rights laws made a positive difference in the lives of millions. Was LBJ sufficiently better than Nixon/Goldwater to make it worth it? Over time, I’ve become convinced that the minor differences argument is an excuse for continued defeat and irresponsibility. I’m not comfortable with that opinion – which makes the invasion of Vietnam part of a better alternative – but the “don’t worry about lunch until the revolution” argument seems even worse.
Posted by: citizen k | May 14, 2006 2:06:27 PM | 8
I dunno, citizen k, we haven’t suffered that “pull rosa luxembourg’s twisted corpse out of the ditch” moment. we don’t have even so much as a dim consciousness in this country of an opposition, because we are too afraid to know what it is we must oppose. no. we are too far from all that, and anodyne of dem “victory” will only attenuate the distance between ideas and reality.
I’m aware the contradiction of the person like me who demands utopia by hoping for destruction. truth is, only an obviousness of fascism will force people to choose to merely live or fight.

1. citizen k. you finally made a point requiring my response. Billmon (pbuh etc.) made the point a while back that a popular front might be a good name for opposition of the recent leaders, and that voting d. was a small step in the correct direction. So if that is what your are saying or even if you’re raising the question, I felt that Billmon’s was a compelling argument. Even so I vote the Green party here my ridings in Canada. So far I have no regrets.
2. slothrop, I had a chat tonight with some family about the whole thing, details of the last five year’s events in the world mostly US and the Middle East and Canada (where I live).
To my surprise the American stood up quickly and defensively for her belief that basically America was its people and not its policies, an important point especially if you are person and not a talking point. She also questioned two points of fact, that the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan had offered up Bin Ladin to an neutral third country (I said for a fair legal trial but who knows) and that Saddam didn’t expel the weapons inspectors but instead that the US had told them to get out of the way because their safety could not be guaranteed.
The third point was about the published stance of US policy that allows preemptive use of the bomb.
All were met by disbelief yet the other participants in the discussion were quick to point out that they had heard the same things; not via lefty blogs but by their own sources. It’s not so easy harping on about the same details but it is nice to know that the facts can be backed up through reputable sources.
I gues that’s the positive flip side of everything being recorded and available – heck if we have google, why can’t they have some ridiculous bloated imitation. Good luck — it’s not the database it’s the query(tm).
Glad to see someone asking the right questions.

Posted by: jonku | May 15 2006 9:56 utc | 26

If one does not take historical comparisons too seriously or rigidly, Roman history is an excellent subject of study in an attempt to better understand modern times.
One could do worse than read Russian exile historian Mikhail I. Rostovtzeff. Rostovtzeff’s Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire (1926) really impressed me as a student.
From the time of the 3rd century reforms of Diocletian onwards, the Empire was a rotten hereditary basket case, reminicient of the post-Stalin Soviet state(substitute collective farm for latifundia, and you’re there).
Rostovtzeff’s analysis of Rome could perhaps also be applied to the American “Empire”, but it would require a lot more cutting and press-fitting.

Posted by: Groucho | May 15 2006 19:28 utc | 28

in the bar the patrons come and go, speaking of empire romeo…
citizen k- nice to see you.
As far as I remember, the Socialist Party in the U.S. was vehemently opposed to WWI. Upton Sinclair quit the party b/c it didn’t support the war. Propaganda posters of the time equated socialism with treason b/c of their lack of support…and then there were the sedition laws, etc.
maybe you didn’t mean to say that they supported the war, but it reads that way.
Here’s a speech from Eugene V. Debs that contains lots of truths, and an optimism, whether real or feigned, that seems so quaint considering where things stand right now.
The socialist party in the U.S. was second to Germany, imo, in terms of the level of opposition pitted against it. The really funny thing, not funny haha, is that so much of the socialist movement came out of the midwest, as Frank noted in his book, What’s the Matter With Kansas. apparently a living wage is no longer a family value.
slothrop- back in rosa luxembourg’s time, the U.S. did have its martyrs–many Wobblies, and others, as I’m sure you know.
…and of course we’ll never know, but I always wonder if the Nazis could have been so successful if the Spartacus League had been willing to compromise and work with their less ideologically pure fellow citizens on the left. Don’t forget that before the Spartacus Revolt, the red guards in Bavaria rounded up and killed ppl who were considered enemies of the new communist republic. I know the Weimar govt was the one that came down on the lefter left–but would they have used the freikorps if the communists were willing to work with the socialists?
it was a different time.
the communists thought their time had come..the course of history was inevitable..the only issue was whether Lenin or Trotsky or all the other “ites” and “ists” would win the ideological battle.
as far as the US, the thread that runs from the progressive era to this one is the continued divine right of capital in this country.
And you know, it’s interesting that the DLC became more powerful as the USSR became less of a threat. The DLC is filled with people from right to work states that keep out unions as if they were satan’s spawn. The argument was that the dems needed to move to the right to win, but FDR also had the southern vote and refused to deal with segregation and the oppression of blacks in this country in any meaningful way. The DLC, in other words, is the democratic party in the south as it was (is) –and Johnson was the aberration –and you know he was the aberration only because Dr. King was so powerfully right and so willing to be a martyr.
I think it’s correct to see FDR as an aberration, not the example of the Democrats, as far as creating jobs and programs…the failure of capitalism was softened, revolution was averted by an evolution to more social justice in laws… just as Teddy was a Republican aberration…who had to leave it to break monopolies…whether he wanted to or not…but of course he also acted like an ass in the Philippines.
but the socialists sort of “invaded” the democratic party back then, after Debs died. Upton Sinclair became a democrat to run for gov of CA with the EPIC campaign..and the dems HATED that ppl voted for him in the primary, rather than the democratic candidate. he lost, btw, in part b/c of three candidates to split the vote, plus millions of dollars in repub. money to smear him.
…and Henry Wallace was dumped for Truman b/c Wallace was associated with socialism, (an old man I know used to tell me about the propaganda at that time…the opposition to Wallace, for instance. I loved talking to him…) and after the war, as we all know, the commies became the threat du jour, or rather, the threat ONCE AGAIN after the Nazis were defeated.
So, if you look at the reality of America, Johnson did do something great. The Vietnam War was biz as usual for both parties. Maybe that should be the starting point for evaluating actions by pols in the US… know that over the last century they were more alike than not — at least since the invasion of the Philippines. Neither was willing to address social problems in any significant way, war was always the best biz op…so what did individuals do, regardless of party affiliation, that is noteable simply because they deviated from the US norm.
Private citizens who go public, outside of the system in one way or another, are the only ones who make things change in this country.
…and so Cindy Sheehan is the latest person to ridicule for her questions that won’t go away.
and as far as American philosophers, I’d have to say that Charlies Pierce is the most important one in relation to this era. William James was no slacker, either.
just rambling…

Posted by: fauxreal | May 16 2006 2:10 utc | 30

Fauxreal – Debs and the US socialists were good, the US “liberals” were disgraceful – read Randolph Bourne’s brilliant repudiation of Dewey. But the real failure was in France and Germany where the socialist parties were powerful and decided to endorse the war (the French at least had the excuse that their greatest leader had to be murdered before the party shouted “hooahh-allons-y”, but … ).
History shows us many examples of how to behave badly, make the wrong choice, and otherwise fuck up.
So I’m with the “better a couple of crumbs than nothing at all” school of weak-kneed reformism. Lost my taste for the apocalypse over time and don’t share the downy cheeked optimism of those who think that there must be a bounce after you hit the sidewalk.

Posted by: citizen k | May 16 2006 5:30 utc | 32

Rowan: “stood down” is a generous way to put it. When confronted with the choice of betraying the people or his social class, Gore raised the white flag.
I basically agree with your analysis, but the limit of the Roman model is that civil society is much stronger now than then. The dynamics of empire conflict with the dynamics of daily life and there is some ground for hoping that daily life will win.

Posted by: citizen k | May 16 2006 11:54 utc | 34

@B:
Thanks:
What did N. Europe generally have
by 1930, and how well did it
work?

Posted by: Groucho | May 16 2006 13:27 utc | 36

What did N. Europe generally have by 1930, and how well did it work?
Sorry – I don´t know it for Europe. In Germany the last piece was unemployment insurance and established in 1927. The system (pension, health-, diability- and unemployment insurance) was complete after that. Some 10 years ago a care-insurance for the elder was added, as the problem of elder in need of care but without family had grown.
All systems are open for all people (but someone self employed will often not have an unemployment insurance) and work(ed) reasonably well after being established.

Posted by: b | May 16 2006 15:36 utc | 38