Barring real success with their "voter fraud program," the Republicans look to be losing this one – maybe losing it big. People like Chris Bowers are asking, "What if it’s a rout?" I’m afraid to get on that bus, I’m superstitious. But I do have some thoughts about how this is playing out.
The Neoconservatives put together something called the Project for the New American Century. They thought that Ronald Reagan’s hyper-militarism had brought down the Iron Curtain, eliminating the opposition. So the U.S. was then the Sole Superpower. They set about to capitalize on that position, planning our centrality in the new century.
I thought the Communists collapsed under the weight of their own ineptness, corruption, and flawed politics. Reagan just happened to be present when it happened and maybe gave it a nudge [I’m overstating that, but I’m closer to right than wrong]. And if there are no successful Rovian interventions, the same thing is about to happen to Ayn Rand’s glorious unregulated Capitalism of the American Reagan Dynasty. It’s falling down under the weight of its own ineptness, corruption, and flawed politics.
This was not the time for the Project for the New American Century the Neoconservatives envisioned. It was time for the Project for America’s finding its place in the New World Century. And the Neoconservatives have made that task immeasurably harder. Their unregulated spending and Capitalism has wrecked our economy good and proper. Their arrogance and pugilism have destroyed our place in the world. And their corruption and divisiveness has fractured our Constitution and our people.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States proclaimed itself the world’s only super-power and hawked American-style capitalism as the only economic system worth considering. How the mighty have fallen. A needless war in Iraq now calls into question whether the American military can control the oil and natural gas of the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea, while the current financial chaos has driven the faith-based Bush administration to pray for government ownership in banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions.
No matter who becomes president, Obama or McCain, this double-barreled cock-up will force Washington to redefine the global role of the American military and the economic role of the US government. What should average citizens expect? What should we demand?…
<insert, a social democracy here>
But all this is only a bare beginning. The crap-shoot capitalists and free-market preachers made their wager and created a disaster. Now, no matter who wins the election, the time has come for the rest of us to take back our government and – in the words of the preamble to our Constitution – "promote the general welfare."
Social Democratic governments in Germany, Holland and Scandinavia have led the way in showing the humane direction we could go in education, social programs and greater tax equality. We should learn from what they’ve done, while creating our own American solutions to the very real problems Americans face every day.
Republicans and many right-wing Democrats will yell "Socialist," just as McCain and Palin have tried to brand Obama "a terrorist." Such smears have long been the tactic of those standing in the way of social progress, whether against women and African-Americans who wanted the right to vote or workers who wanted the right to organize themselves into unions.
The fight has often been bloody, even deadly. But in the end, we know which side won, and so do those who lost.
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