More Aftermath

Amid the euphoria and hand wringing this morning, as we embrace our hung government I read that voters who were most angered by the destruction wrought by bankers and the false fix of the banking system leant heavily towards the Republicans.

This I find interesting.

It is a talisman for contemporary America.

The Democrats were in power. So they were forced to defend and stabilize the economy. This led them, wrongly in my opinion, to bend over backwards to keep the “system” afloat despite the fact that the “system” was dysfunctional, anti-social, and encouraged destructive rent seeking by greed driven bankers, lawyers and sundry hangers on. Our current level of inequality is a direct result of that “system”.

The Republicans were out of power. They had no need to defend anything even though the bank bail outs were a Bush policy. They obstructed, disengaged, and otherwise did nothing all the time the economy was burning down around us. They created the “system” so they were quiet as to whether is was good, bad, or indifferent.

Yet the voters decided to put the “system” back under Republican governance – or almost did in view of our hung government.

So the question becomes: how did the Democrats the traditional friends and defenders of the lower classes and working people end up being tarred as the aiders and abetters of the plutocrats? How did this inversion of traditional politics take place?

One word: Obama.

At every step, whenever there was a choice to make a stand against the plutocrats and their system, he stood for the them against the working masses. Even as recently as last week he was arguing he should not stop the foreclosure mess from unfolding. His reason? That we should protect the integrity of the “system” and not interfere with its functioning however screwed up it is. He didn’t stand tall for his own constituency. In his zeal to be perceived as a safe pair of hands he abandoned his base of support and sided with the minority who caused the crisis. His party went along for much the same reason.

The Democrats fear of being seen as irresponsible meant they were seen as responsible. For the disaster. Regular folks don’t see the value in “saving” the banks. But they sure as heck can smell a rat. And they know the banks are infested with rats.

The irony is that while it is possible the Democrats had to hold their collective noses when they saved the bankers and their huge bonuses, and possibly thought they were brave standing up for the “system”, our newly elected Republican populist masses in the House of Representatives don’t even have that fig leaf to hide behind. They absolutely don’t care about the working people. They never have.

So where’s a worker to go? Who will protect the interests of the underprivileged, the poor, or the elderly?

When all our energy goes into saving the “system”: no one.

When all our energy goes into changing the “system”: well, at the moment no one wants to do that either.

The point being that changing politicians is meaningless when they are all committed to the “system” that just caused a crisis.

We have two years to surface a leader who stands for the rest of us.

Good luck.