Rick Perry, Our Next President

Yep, pretty scary

But not scary enough to scare me into voting for Obama ever again, or any other Vichy scum for that matter.  

In retrospect, we would have been better off if McCain/Palin had won in 2008.  The Obama administration has consistently governed to the corporate right of what McCain would have been able to pull off, and what's scarier than the prospect of President Perry is the fact that Obama has done exactly what he wanted to do.  Obama's true agenda turned out to be the agenda he had claimed he was steadfastly opposed to during the '08 campaign.  Perry would try to stab us in the chest. Obama would continue stabbing us in the back. Which is worse? I'd like to at least see the knife coming and have chance to defend against it.

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"Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that." --- Britney Spears, September 2003

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by: Mucius Scaevola @ Fri Aug 12, 2011 at 17:21:55 PM UTC

Why Is This Guy Even TX Gov?

There is a diary up on Kos which discusses this.

Several factors must be in place before a significant part of the citizenry starts talking about bringing down its own government. One is that there must be a significant erosion of the sense of mutual obligation and common purpose and solidarity. These things come about when a society has become disaggregated, which has been happening in the United States since the 1980s.  The second necessary ingredient is the confluence of several crises which so threaten large numbers of people.

What has happened to our country?  Why is this fool even being given the time of day?

The alienation against the rest of America and our government goes well beyond the ranks of the Tea Baggers. It includes others who will threaten havoc to save their tax cuts, and it includes the legions who want to somehow head off the coming of pluralistic America.

If Governor Rick Perry enters the Republican primary, his following will provide some measure of how many people share his deep, destructive anger. He has talked about taking up arms against the United States, and has also discussed secession and nullification. Sane and responsible  observers on his side of the aisle--as they say---  should be be pointing out that this sort of man has already disqualified himself for the presidency.

Fellow Republicans will not mention this because he speaks for so many. Respectable economists calculate that the budget and debt ceiling deals-negotiated through rule or ruin tactics-- will detract at least 1% from economic growth. The media talking heads dare not report this findingf because so many Americans saw nothing wrong with nearly destroying our financial system. The crisis is deeper than most think.

These people are totally alienated from the rest of American society and deeply hate "it" -- the United States government. They are an economically secure element that would rather bring down the government than pay one dollar more in taxes, especially to provide entitlements for people they think do not deserve them, minorities and the poor. Representative Mike Kelly saw the debt ceiling crisis as the first step toward slashing Social Security and Medicare.

American society had been heading toward a genuine crisis for some years. Since the 1980s, the position of the middle class has been in decline. Good-paying middle class jobs are becoming harder to find as more jobs are off-shored. To maintain a household's standard of living, more than one member has had to go to work. The middle class share of the nation's wealthy has declined while the share of the top 2% had grown larger and larger. Liberals have tried to address these problems but were effectively rebuffed with claims they were arousing class conflict. Today, the counter charge is that they are attacking "job creators."

We could here argue that our own elected officials are equally at fault, but I am not so sure.   Certainly, we've had no success offering what was the standard liberal alternative since 1976, a very long time.  Perhaps there is more to this.

The basic uneasiness about the future of the Middle Class is joined by uneasiness for out physical security, growing out of the terrible events of 9/11.  Add to this the anxiety many feel about decaying family structures, single-parent households, and a host of similar problems. There has been growing concern that the United States is becoming a multicultural, pluralistic nation, and the election of an African American president ignited these concerns into raging fires. Extraordinary numbers of Americans were convinced Barack Obama was born in Africa and was some sort of African socialist. All these fears and threats were brought to boiling poinnts by the economic and financial crises of 2007-2009.  

There are many frameworks with which to analyze this. The most useful that of Anthony Wallace's revitalization movement hypothesis. In its third stage-where we are now-- almost everyone sees that something or things are very wrong in the United States. Some people react by questioning what were basics: the American dream, the myth of unrestrained market capitalism, American exceptionalism, and even what they might call American imperialism.

Others, and they are far more numerous, respond by refusing to admit that common beliefs and notions have badly broken down. They redouble their belief in the American Dream and unrestrained market capitalism. Historically, those who want to keep things as they were or to return to imaginary  purer state of the status quo come to be embrace intolerance, nativism, Social Darwinism, and sometimes violence. They find emotional comfort in hanging onto what they think is the sanctioned conventional wisdom, which cannot fail in the long-run.  Their's is a political fundamentalism that is very powerful and can have a long duration.

I have been to several events to oppose the "TeaParty" people who tried to disrupt Diana DeGette's presentations and can affirm that they are white, generally older and highly motivated. They reminded me of the "mothers" in New Orleans who opposed integration in 1960.  There is no reaching out for common ground to those who are afraid, and most have been since September, 2001.  They are racists, no doubt, but they are not wealthy not have any prospects of being so.  Why have they gained the power which they hold?

Society will eventually move from this third, conflict ridden phase of revitalization, to the fourth stage, when some sort of synthesis will emerge. Older folks will have little influence on what emerges, except by that they try to tell people coming of age now. The latter are the most convinced that the existing order and its idea systems do not work. What will emerge will have some elements of the old order and traditional conventional wisdom. The elements that will be added can be worthwhile or malignant. What is added will contribute to some kind or order and stability. It could be something we progressives find undesirable, elements of a soft fascism. It is important now to contribute ideas and information that could eventually influence a paradigm shift that would be good for society. At the moment, the facts and ideas we contribute do not phase the right-wing extremists or most of our fellow citizens. In the long run, our contributions can have a positive effect.

The general breakdown in government and trust in it and in ourselves is at hand.  How we react is up to each of us.  I think we need to remain engaged.

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by: saindenver @ Fri Aug 12, 2011 at 20:12:48 PM UTC

I'm engaged.

That's why I won't vote for Obama. The people who aren't engaged are the ones who can't see the folly in continuing this catastrophic acquiescence to the "lesser of evils" paradigm.  People who put party loyalty above principle are far less engaged than those of us who have decided that the only way out of this abyss is to hold the Democrats' feet to the fire and/or establish a new party that will champion the principles the Democratic Party used to stand for.  

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"Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that." --- Britney Spears, September 2003

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by: Mucius Scaevola @ Sat Aug 13, 2011 at 06:26:32 AM UTC

[ Parent ]