WWH: Wake"N'Bake ~~ "Capitulation"

You know that great, ol' Dr. John samba/shuffle, "(I was in) The Right Place"? I started hearing it when I was reading Robert Reich on Friday. As usual, Robert Reich is right, but it's about the wrong thing, and he's also therefore wrong about his central prescription:

"...But if the shutdowns contribute to the belief among Americans that government doesn't work, Republicans win over the long term. As with the rise of the Tea Partiers, the initiative shifts to those who essentially want to close it down for good.

That's why it's so important that the President have something more to say to the American people than "I want to cut spending, too, but the Republican cuts go too far." The "going too far" argument is no match for a worldview that says government is the central problem to begin with." (Once again, deepest thanks to the departed Ronald Reagan and the best damn propaganda department in the WORLD! for that delightful memory~~W)

What he's right about is that the entire agenda of the GOP since 1960 has been to privatize the State and to confer upon the CorpoRats that de facto lethal authority hitherto reserved to the elected Government responsible (at least nominally) to the People. Some of us have been saying for at LEAST that long what a bad idea it is to turn Government over to people who want to destroy it. I have yet to meet ANYONE whose instincts I would completely trust absent some controlling authority. "Government" is required for humans to live together in large (multi-hundred-million) numbers. The GOPhux want to turn it ALL over to their (and our) OWNERS, and do away with that messy, expensive, participatory shit, while maintaining the necessary appearances of the much-loved, but soooo-outdated 'democracy' crap.

What Reich's wrong about, in my always humble estimation, is that he appears to think that Pres. Shamwow regards the debate on any different terms than the GOPhux do. He uses their lexicon. He accepts their definitions. He cedes his most important gropund before the argument has even been joined. O'Bama is a CORPORAT! Born and bred, body and soul, top to bottom, and side to side, he's an Organization Man. Get that, and all the rest makes sense.

The furthest thing from Prez. Shamwow's mind is to say "HEY! Not only are the GOPhux WRONG about the AILMENT, they're also and necessarily WRONG about the treatment." O'Bama could no more announce tomorrow that he totally rejected the GOP plan than he could fart diamonds for tiaras for his daughters dancing costumes. He should not be compromising on how MUCH to cut, he should be proposing and introducing programs aimed at actually helping the PEOPLE, as much to regain and rebuild some trust as anything else. He could, if he were a "people's President."

But to think he would do so is ludicrous. HOW could ANY nominally reasonable, normally intelligent people imagine for a single instant that the Owners of the Country--oligarchs, plutocrats, aristos around the globe-- would ever turn management of THEIR "property" (us, btw) or the system of its incredibly profitable administration, over to somebody --to ANYBODY-- who posed even the tiniest, remotest, slightest, slimmest, faintest GLIMMER of a chance of challenging, much less undoing, the least jot or tittle of their immensely profitable, unimaginably powerful status quo? Really?

No. That's preposterous! Who could believe such a thing?

Thus, Pres. Shamwow, already by the time he had ASSUMED his offfice, had satisfactorily and faithfully demonstrated he neither would, nor even particularly wanted to, upset any hegemonic applecarts or otherwise in any way disturb the Owners in their well-earned ease. You don't get there any other way.