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<P><FONT size=2><FONT color=#0000ff size=3>Thank you, Steve, for this earnest
admonishment to us all. We've got a counter-revolution on our hands, and they
are winning.<BR><BR>John<BR></FONT><BR><BR>-----Original Message-----<BR>From:
dialogue-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net [<A
href="mailto:dialogue-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net">mailto:dialogue-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net</A>]
On Behalf Of steve har<BR>Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2012 9:13 AM<BR>To:
dialogue@wedgeblade.net<BR>Subject: [Dialogue] Civil Society Slow Motion Train
Wreck like Wisconsin<BR><BR>To Sunny Walker and others who kvetch about whether
the President should wear "white gloves" in policy and politics. Really curious
about your view point, where you stand that makes this an interesting
question.<BR><BR>Today's Wisconsin election results make it clear -one
more time- who has set the table of policy and politics in this country and who
is causing a slow motion train wreck in civil society. What I say is there
is an Ayn Rand conservative counter-revolution going on and it leaves critiques
of Obama pretty irrelevant.<BR><BR>Obama kvetching actually mises the entire
point, something like the fans watching a baseball game at Wrigley field
on Fox News mis the point. They don't notice #10 million dollars that the
Wrigley Field owners choose put into socially conservative political campaigns
and support political functionaries like Scott Walker. The TV game watchers love
watching the game real or political baseball, but her opinions actually make no
difference whatsoever.<BR><BR>In Costa Rica, where I often gather with the
Democrats Abroad and try to get US Citizens to register and vote from abroad,
many people -Costa Ricans and Americans alike- see the stakes in the game quite
differently because there is a little longer view to things, a little further
away from things.<BR><BR>Since the Reagan era there is a systematic counter
revolution underway to take apart FDR style social democracy which created a
large middle class by bootstrapping people into the middle class with universal
education, bank loans available to ordinary people, social security and
medicare.<BR><BR>It is the model that Costa Rica followed after 1948 after the
revolution against United Fruit and others. FDR style social democracy helped
Costa Rica to become a stable peaceful country with a large middle class. It is
one of the reasons Costa Ricans so admire the United States and are so concerned
for the future direction of the country and its well-being.<BR><BR>The shape of
FDR style social democracy is like the shape of a diamond, like a wide baseball
diamond, with a really wide middle class, a relatively small wealthy class
and a relatively small poor class.<BR><BR>The shape of the conservative model-
underway since the 1980s - is Ayn Rand's model of Libertarian oligarchy
where the social philosophy is something like "I got mine, why don't you get
busy and find some work".<BR><BR>The oligarchy is a pyramid. There s a group
very wealthy people libertarian-conservative people on top - people like the
Koch bothers<BR>- who organize and fund people like Scott Walker to look after
their personal and financial interests with tax breaks and tax loopholes and
attacks on pensions, teachers, public employees, and the rest of
it.<BR><BR>There is a whole class of fanboys like Fox News and Rush
Limbaugh<BR>getting wealthy by hooting and hollering and shilling.
Everyone else<BR>isn't really a matter of concern unless they by the soap
suds. The trendy name for this oligarchy is th 1%. Everyone else is the
99%<BR><BR>So Sunny I'm thinking your views attention & diserve respect and
and good humor too. But I differ re your Obama criticism because it misses the
point; I think your views are the views of a detached spectator watching the
game from the peanut stand and the peanut stand doesn't notice the train
wreck happening in civil society.<BR><BR>There is a story developing now to tell
about an entire group of middle class managers, teachers, firefighters, ordinary
people outsourced from their jobs - even highly skilled facilitators - watching
this game playout - this slow motion train wreck taking place -some are
wide awake, some are putting on and taking off their white-gloves.<BR><BR>I'm
interested in finding out where you stand in the revolution-counter revolution
of our time.<BR><BR>JP Sartre CS1 paper on Social Revolutionaries is a more
interesting topic to me than the topic you raise.<BR><BR>Consider this poem that
I can still hear in Charles Lingo's booming voice<BR><A
href="http://www.kalliope.org/da/digt.pl?longdid=lawrence2001061107">http://www.kalliope.org/da/digt.pl?longdid=lawrence2001061107</A><BR><BR>If
you like I'll get you some digital photos of Kaye Hayes teaching notes on
Sartre's paper to help you figuring out where you stand in the
counter-revolution at hand. You don't get to be a spectator with "interesting
opinions".<BR><BR>I think "professional facilitators" can and may loose their
gigs too, just like the teachers and firefighters and police that are going to
loose their jobs in Wisconsin thanks to The Kochs and right wing money funding
Scott Walker's 31 million dollar campaign.<BR><BR>Wondering why you're kvetching
about Obama?<BR>Wondering if you have anything to say about the editorial in the
Nation this morning?<BR><BR>Steve Harrington<BR>---<BR>The Nation<BR><A
href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/168242/recall-campaign-against-scott-walker-fails">http://www.thenation.com/blog/168242/recall-campaign-against-scott-walker-fails</A><BR><BR>Robert
M. La Follette, the architect of the progressive movement that a century ago
made Wisconsin the nation's "laboratory of democracy,"<BR>recognized that the
experiments would at times go awry. "We have long rested comfortably in this
country upon the assumption that because our form of government was democratic,
it was therefore automatically producing democratic results. Now, there is
nothing mysteriously potent about the forms and names of democratic institutions
that should make them self-operative," he observed after suffering more than his
share of defeats. "Tyranny and oppression are just as possible under democratic
forms as under any other."<BR><BR>Those words echoed across the decades on the
night of June 5, as the most powerful of the accountability tools developed in
La Follette's laboratory -- the right to recall errant officials -- proved
insufficient for the removal of Governor Scott Walker.<BR><BR>The failure of the
campaign against Walker, while heartbreaking for Wisconsin union families and
the great activist movement that developed to counter the governor and his
policies, offers profound lessons not just for Wisconsin but for a nation that
is wrestling with fundamental questions of how to counter corporate and
conservative power in a Citizens United moment. Those lessons are daunting, as
they suggest the "money power" populists and progressives of another era
identified as the greatest threat to democracy has now organized itself as a
force that cannot be easily thwarted even by determined "people
power."<BR><BR><BR>--<BR>Steve
Harrington<BR>_______________________________________________<BR>Dialogue
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