Maintaining the Status Quo
P. Schultz
December 25, 2012
Here is an article from today’s New
York Times entitled, “Clout Diminished, Tea Party Turns To Narrower Interests.”
No shit, Sherlock, as this was what the last presidential election between Mr.
White Bread and Mr. Almost White Bread was all about, as noted here more than
once.
“The Tea Party might not be
over, but it is increasingly clear that the election last month significantly
weakened the once-surging movement, which nearly captured control of the Republican Party through a
potent combination of populism and fury.”
“Leading
Congressional Republicans, though they remain far apart from President Obama, have embraced
raising tax revenues in budget negotiations, repudiating a central tenet of the
Tea Party. Even more telling, Tea Party activists in the middle of the country
are skirting the fiscal showdown in Congress and turning to narrower issues,
raising questions about whether the movement still represents a citizen
groundswell to which attention must be paid.”
“A potent combination
of populism and fury” has been checked, the “republic” has been “saved” even
as, or rather if truth be told, because we
are close to going over a “fiscal cliff.” Oops! I am sorry: I should have
written “the fiscal cliff.”
“It would be a
mistake…to assume that…a system could not be, despite its fraudulence and
persistent malfunction, a viable social order careening along its madcap course
indefinitely.” [Where the Wasteland Ends,
Theodore Roszak, p. 68]
Of course, such a
system requires much labor, much finesse to maintain the appearance of
“success,” to disguise the malfunctioning that is endemic to it. But then there
are, given the wealth such a system has created, always more troops, more
“boots on the ground,” as those “in the know” like to say these days, to adjust
to the latest malfunction. We can always engage in the latest “surge,” and not
just abroad. Perhaps all that is needed is a massacre in a school, even an
elementary school, to provide the needed momentum for our latest “surge.” “Ah
yes, more gun laws; that should do the trick, shouldn’t it?” Or perhaps we can
find yet another “crisis,” say one in “higher education,” which will motivate
yet another “surge” by which we will, without actually changing anything of
importance, “progress” toward that ever receding “promised land.”
Ah, but there I go
again, engaging in “conspiracy theories.” When will I ever learn, when will I
ever learn?
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