AN INTERESTING GALLOP POLL: US GOVERNMENT BIGGEST THREAT
For those in the international readership here, pardon me while I rant, or better put, vent once again about Amairicunn politics.
As most of you know I don't like talking about Amairicunn politics, at least, not if it means I have to talk about the Nancy "let's-vote-on-it-in-the-middle-of-the-night-in-closed-session-to-find-out-what's-in-it"-Pelosi-corporate socialists in the Dummycrook Party, or the George H.W. "let's-call-it-'substantial-equivalence'-so-if-it-looks-like-corn-and-tastes-like-corn-it's-corn-but-we-can-still-patent-it-and-don't-have-to-do-much-scientific-testing-of-it" Bush-crooks-and-crony-corporate-socialist-crapitalists in the Republithug Party on the other. I think I'm fairly justified in having such harsh estimations of the twin horrors of Democrats and Republicans, because I used to be the latter, and was raised by two members of the former (well, they were anyway, at least until LBJ cured them of their acute Dummycrookery, just as the Thistle family cured me of chronic Republithuggery. Nor is my mention of LBJ or the Thistle family accidental, for both epitomize the corruption of the American system, and did much to further and systematize it).
Frankly, I am fed up with the ideologues of both parties. The Dummycrook party is socialist in spite of the reassuring words of its policy wonks and spokesmen, and are, and have always been, the party for Big Government's ability to interfere with every aspect of life via regulation, "social programs" and a federal code that no human being can possibly ever know, and to do so with a nauseatingly hypocritical appeal to "compassion" and being "the party of the people" Yea. Right. That's why you have so many millionaires and billionaires like George Soros and Warren Buffet supporting you. Hope and change. Trust me, you are as transparent as you claim to be, but not in quite the way I think you meant. I get it.
And the Republithugs?
The Republithugs are and have always been, in spite of their reassuring words, the party of unfettered corporate power(they call it "the free market" and "capitalism", when it little resembles the former and their mercantilist version of the latter would make a Rothschild blush with embarrassment and moral indignation), an example of which we may see in the whole GMO fiasco, and the principle of "substantial equivalence." And similarly, I am fed up with "free market ideologues" too. If the laissez fare quasi-Randian attitude coming out of certain circles of the Republithug party had their way, we'd still have that form of slavery known as child labor, and Mr. Ford could have made his Model Ts using children on the assembly lines. And that's no joke either, folks... there's a reason major corporations are and for "free markets," where they can export their manufacturing plants overseas and exploit "cheap labor"... but you get the picture I suspect.
And that's my point; the extremists in both parties have taken over in the name of their favored dogmas of economics, from Keynesianism to the "Austrian school," and that is why their stock is at an all time low. Thus, to the Chris Matthewses and Sean Hannities and Lanny Davises and Juan Williamses and Rush Limbaughs and Oprah Winfreys and Barbara Walterses: you're talking to a dwindling audience and increasingly defending the indefensible records of your parties...
In fact, according to a recent Gallup Poll taken last December, the confidence in the institutions of government is not only low, it is breathtakingly low, indeed, almost alarmingly so, for almost 72% say that the government is the biggest threat. That's almost three fourths of the voting population folks. That's enormously significant:
Record High in U.S. Say Big Government Greatest Threat
This comes at a time that political identification among Americans who label themselves as "independent" is at another high as well. In other words, the Republithug party is not gaining any windfalls from a position that would normally have been associated with "conservatism." It's not that American independents, Republicans, or middle-of-the-road Democrats have really changed their views. It's rather that the party machineries of both political parties have proven, time and again, that their rhetoric and promises are simply no longer trusted.
None of this, of course, appears to have registered with the party hacks and powers that be, as Billary Clinton appears ready to make a run for a first/third term, and it has been reported that feelers have already been made by a certain member of the Thistle family to have his own go, so, it's business as usual for Dummycrooks and Republithugs.
Just how deep seated the cynicism runs, however, may be gauged by the recent retirement of well-known Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who after the last (s)election cycle, entered a state of reassessment of his own approach to polling and politics. Seen and heard often on various American television and radio talk shows, Mr. Luntz - whom this author was actually acquainted with at the University of Oxford - came to the conclusion that in spite of being good at what he did in his focus groups, and in the way he understood the political uses of language, he just was not good enough.
But I suggest Mr. Luntz not be too hard on himself, and I suggest the Gallup numbers show why, for even though it is clear that most of these numbers are driven by Republithugs and Independents, the fact that 56% of Dummycrooks are thinking the same thing - in the party of FDR, Truman, LBJ, George McGovern and Obama Health Insurance Company Care - is to my mind highly significant. It is those numbers, more than the Republithug or Independent showing, that indicates that something profound is happening in the population and electorate. So Mr. Luntz should not be too hard on himself: America is in a deep state of crisis, but this is not the usual crisis being manufactured for the moment and by political means. It is a cultural and spiritual problem; nothing has changed, really, politically. What has changed is rather the perception of the system and the two monopoly political parties themselves, parties that basically are organized conspiracies or shills for various corporate interests. The system and its inherent corruptions, which became endemic during and after World War Two for a variety of reasons (most having to do with the national security state) are now manifest. No amount of rhetoric or terminological adjustment can successfully address this growing perception, because the perception isn't just about Halliburton, or Dick Cheney, or neo-con 9/11 truthers, or Clinton era Whitewater and Mena scandals, or BCCI or Iran-Contra or Bobby Baker or George Soros or Goldman Sachs or the Federal Reserve Act, or about a runaway derivatives market or mortgage fraud or robo-signing of mortgages in big "too big to fail too corrupt to jail" banks or banksters, or about too many military bases or too many wars and interventions, it isn't about the influence of lobbyists or political action committees or radical leftists like Saul Alinsky or radical rightists like David Duke, or Dr. Emmanuel or the conservative Heritage Foundation Think tank plan for "health" care and its suspicious resemblance to Obama Health Insurance Company Care, or the use of the IRS or FBI "Cointellpro" to target Tea Partiers or Martin Luther King, or about gun running to Mexican drug lords and "immigration reform" or bringing drugs back in body bags from Vietnam or Watergate or money still flowing into CREEP(the Committee to RE-Elect the President) long after Nixon was re-elected for a second term or GATT or NAFTA or goofery Club of Rome or Bilderberg globalists and their secret meetings, or the security cameras on every stoplight in every city, or out of control police tasering the homeless and shooting mentally ill teenagers in front of their parents, or the Council of Ten...er... pardon me, the National Security Council claiming to have the power to round up and hold without warrant or any due process an American citizen whom the Star Chamb... er... the Council of Te... er... the National Security Council deems secretly to be a threat to oligarchical...er... national security...
... it's about all of it.
And that's a good thing.
It's a good thing because it means people are waking up as never before. And in the long term, it's not going to go away or be mollified by increasingly transparent and meaningless rhetoric of "transparency" or "hope and change" or "a thousand points of light" or even Contracts on America and pledges to "reduce the size of government" on the basis of "conservative principles," pledges that never materialize. It's not going go away through focus groups or adjustments of terminology. The cynicism is substantive. It's a good thing, because it means people are recovering that most essential human component for informed action, be that action spiritual, cultural, or political(and political action always depends on the first two, and not vice versa). That most essential component is memory. I am bold to suggest that what the Gallup poll shows is that voters in both political parties and in the "independent center" are waking up, and holding the parties and their candidates responsible for their records.
Don't get me wrong. Most of the people polled in the Gallup poll will trudge off to the ("rig-able") computer ballot boxes and cast their votes in classical American style for "the lesser of two evils." (Now stop and think about that for a moment in the light of the track record of both parties, one party which demonizes individual rights and responsibilities [and God help you if you acquire some wealth or stand up for the second amendment!], and the other party which demonizes you for being poor, or needing food stamps, or being homeless or unemployed, the same party which has helped lead the charge - remember George Guilder? - to ship those jobs overseas in the name of free markets.).
I suggest that this Gallup Poll means something else: the first organized opposition that can stake a claim to represent that growing spike represented by the Gallup pool, and that can state that claim in clear, consistent principled fashion, and that will push and act on those principles politically as a part of long term discipline will be the death knell for one or the other of the two parties. In the meantime, the two political parties that form the American political cartel are increasingly caught in a money-public relations spiral of their own making, having to spend increasing amounts of money on ever more elaborate advertising schemes to convince an increasingly cynical and rightly mistrustful electorate that their party, and its candidates, offer a real choice and opportunity for change, a perception that is increasingly difficult to elaborate and sustain, for the long record of both says otherwise. If the trend continues, sooner or later the day will come that they'll hold an "election," and no one will turn out to vote for one of two choices that the corrupt system presents to them, and the system will stand exposed for what it really is: nothing but an oligarchy and plutocracy wrapped in the outward formalities of a republic.
Once again, I vote "no confidence" to both houses and to all their candidates, at all levels of government, local, state, and federal. Is that guilt by association? You betcha! And I'll bet that the real meaning of the Gallup poll is that perhaps a growing number of people are seeing and thinking the same or similar things. In this, I suspect the Gallup poll, like all polls, is misreading the signals. To put it simply: the two political parties are different in form but consubstantial in essence, and hence, rhetoric alone divides them(in that respect, consider the last charade of a presidential (s)election where, in a nation debating Obamacare, the choice was between two candidates whose views on that issue were substantially the same, leaving only rhetoric to divide them.) They are both subservient to oligarchical interests. The first organization that can articulate the substance of that political center, wins the long term political power in this country.
See you on the flip side...
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Joseph I didn’t pay close attention to the punctuation, particularly the 12th paragraph of your diatribe but it felt like it might have been a contender for one of the world’s longest sentences. A rant, par excellence, almost as long as it is good and one I’ll be keeping for future reference.
Remember that the NSA/CIA combination controls all political and business leadership with electronic warfare weaponry which,lets face it, no individual can withstand without losing a great deal of their day to day effectiveness at their work,this includes lawyers and doctors and scientists that the combination find necessary to carry on their objectives,the seeming disempowerment of the “constitution of the United States”, the largest threat to kingdoms and other dictatorial forms of government the world has ever seen. If the USA loses this ideological power they will join the third world (think of all the friends we’ve made there recently).
An epic rant, hats off, I don’t think you left anything out of the laundry list of decline.
I would only argue that the real, needed change is not going to come from a Federal-level party but from grass-roots action at a state and local level, particularly and crucially at the state level. The reassertion of the states’ (enormous) powers and rights under the Constitution is already happening now on numerous issues, and this will only grow and gain in power.
Long-term and globally, I think you will see a mass reassertion of local and regional power in the face of monolithic and oppressive national and international structures. As regional structures re-energize and gain allegiance and accrete legitimacy and power, the Big Brother corporatist constructs will collapse of their own corrupt, self-serving weight.
We have the technology to devolve political power to toward the individual but this scares the elites and the power centers more than anything, but it is the future and it will come.
I should also add that Brussels is starting to direct large grants directly to regions throughout the EU in an attempt to further undercut the power of the national governments that compose it. Blind ideologues that they are, they are funding their own obsolescence.
“They are both subservient to oligarchical interests. The first organization that can articulate the substance of that political center, wins the long term political power in this country.”
I humbly suggest that it does not matter which “organization” “wins the long term political power.”
As I said recently, all office holders will simply do what they are told. That is the OBSERVABLE reality since at least Jimmy Carter (many would argue for long before that).
To think that this system will EVER respond to “the will of the people” is like pounding your read against a brick wall to stop a headache.
The poll says “big government” and that’s pretty much the same thing as big business: Booz-Hamiltion-NSA-Google (and Google’s search patents are controlled my Stanford, computer code written with guvmint money.)
Also after the 2012 presidential election polling Gallup is kind of a joke.
The children should not have been kicked out of the labor market. But should have been used to protect the rights of their parents and other adults workers rights. By being force out of the market played right into the hands of eugenics movement by reducing them to useless eaters. As for the government they’ve always since colonial times been the servants of big business ready to do their bidding at moment notice. Suppressing unruly natives, slaves, or workers at a drop of a hat. The political circus has been going on for ages.
How would kids working on giant machines in say 1900s New England protect their parents’ rights? I note here at the time women couldn’t vote.
And lets be real clear small kids were definitely used for the purposes of getting into small places of running machines in order to maintain those machines.
Lost by protecting the children work safety the business owners would have had to protect the adults worker safety as well.
Last time I voted I chose a third party presidential candidate as a protest vote. That was the last time I will utilize that political maneuver. I will never know if that vote ever counted simply because computer voting makes elections so easy to rig. In the world of computers programmers are king. The corporation who controls the software patents and communication backbone controls the votes! I shudder to think how long it has been since we had a real election where one’s vote actually counted.
If you call your congressmen and speak to them about your opinions on the issues, you are engaged in the political process–whether you vote or not. I call my Representative and Senators before, during and after a vote on issues that are important to me–and remind them that I am watching them carefully. Though they pay more attention to PACS than people, the reminder of my existence and opinion is the best reality check I can offer. Their Constitutional duty is to represent my country, my state, my district and my interests. These are unconditional duties and responsibilities, thus independent of whether or not they earned my vote. This type of activity is your best defense for the critics who will accuse of you of non-participation. In the end this activity is far more relevant than the mere fiction of an “honest” vote.
While I am still not sure about the immorality of voting, I will agree with Spirit Splice on this one. Voting in a fraudulent federal election is affirming a corrupt system. The best vote of no confidence is perhaps the choice not to participate. But this choice could prevent you from participating in the procedure that may help transform your local community into something better. In the end all politics are local. Local elections are the critical ones for the future—and every citizen in a community has to decide whether the local electoral process remains a valid option.
I believe there is hope, but the opportunities are in rapid decline. We as individuals must reclaim our sovereignty, rebuild our culture, reclaim our local economies and reestablish our communities. Simultaneously we must find a way to destroy the federal and state notions of the corporate self. If we can do this there is a chance we can transform our nation into something better than it was—and better as it presently is. But we have to do something soon!
… sometimes cut and paste from WORD doesn’t even work. The next to the last statement should be “–and better than it presently is.” What we once had is far preferable than what we have now.
Some computer voting machines also involve paper ballets, eg the ones in use in Minnesota 25 years ago. Don’t know what they use there today.
“presently” means “soon”.
Just got off the boob tube. Thought I’d check the 12 o’clock news(local) & see how far I could go before I Daffy Ducked, “Easy Stomach…..E …A…..S…..Y! It was near two minutes. They were discussing the wonderful news of how kindergarteners were now starting to save for their college education. (To put somewhat of a dent into their future as a debt slaves, I suppose).
The point being is – let us not fall into their ever widening “net” of eventual “acceptance”. For instance, Their 5 stages: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, & Acceptance/Forget About IT! It is plain a simple: RESISTANCE. Every damn step of the way is a resistant one; in whatever means possible. Whether in educating, leading by example, in whatever fashion or design that can put up a front resistance to “Their” way of acceptance.
Forget About Acceptance!
Resistance!
I wonder if all the US congressmen are aware of what people “outside” the US think of them. I see the dog and pony show and all that goes with it as a circus show. I don’t know much about politics but I do know when I see people who are obviously telling lies. The whole world is sick of the two party system, here in OZ there are now independent parties gaining a lot of votes, especially in the Senate, and so it doesn’t matter what the government wants to pass, it has to get it through the Senate, and that’s why the Senate is there. Anyway a good dummy spit by Joseph is always good for a laugh, problem is, he’s right.
The so called independent parties here that you speak of have no back bone, very little community influence and could not form government in their own right. They lack a comprehensive policy infrastructure and proper leadership. To put it bluntly, they are inconsequential and insignificant in the greater scheme of political power.
500 like minded members – comprehensive policy infrastructure – a leader with the oratory skills of a Hitler or a Blair. That’s all it will take. Oh and registration too with the Australian Electoral Office 🙂
“we’d still have that form of slavery known as child labor, and Mr. Ford could have made his Model Ts using children on the assembly lines.”
The implicit assumptions here are a bit disturbing. The concept of “child labor” is meaningless. Is a 16 year old a child? 14? At what arbitrary age is one no longer a child? “Children” have been involved in farm work forever, which I am sure you have no issue with. Does it become morally wrong in your view if we start paying them for their work? Everyone claims to be against child labor until the chores need done.
“there’s a reason major corporations are and for “free markets,” where they can export their manufacturing plants overseas and exploit “cheap labor”…”
Controlling borders and other such protectionist policies are just nationalistic nonsense. This is the sort of thinking that leads to Nazi Germany, British and American Imperialism. A true free market would not have governmental controls on trade of any sort.
I find it puzzling that as much as you point out the immoral nature of religion, you give a pass to the equally immoral of the state. No person can EVER gain the right to rule because no person has the right to rule. You cannot delegate rights you don’t have. All governments rob their people and control their lives. There cannot be a “good government” any more than there can be a “good rapist”.
When you address money, you talk about real money being issued by the state in stead of by private banking. Both cases are monopoly and both cases are immoral. The state, a religious fiction, has no more right to issue money than anyone else. The problem isn’t that the state isn’t issuing the money, the problem is that there is a monopoly on the issuance of money. It also isn’t true that states issue money debt free. They simply impose the debt up front in the form of theft through taxes. As with monetized debt, it is impossible to ever appease the “anger” of the state and make the robbery of taxation go away.
It is not compassionate to take what isn’t yours under the pretense of helping others. No one has the right to steal. Changing the label of the theft doesn’t change the morality. Government is nothing more than a monotheism, a Yahwism by a different name.
If it is wrong for you to do something, then it is wrong for everyone to do it, even as a group. You don’t have the right to take your neighbors money to feed the poor or build a bridge, nor can the god called government.
So it’s okay for children to operate hay bailers, or other heavy dangerous equipment that can easily tear a hand off?
So there are indeed problems with children working on a farm.
No, no particular problem with a kid feeding a few pigs on a very small family farm. That’s likely the labor you imagined. And it’s not how most US farms operate, today in 2014.
Wow. You okay? Take a breath. That was BRILLIANT. Smashing!
You reached into my heart-mind and ripped out its content and THREW it on the table of clarity and action! Bravo, good Doctor! Carry on undaunted.
I have always felt it was important to vote (or else shut up! about who is in office)…but have become so disenamored of both parties, and the process, that I despair of what to do about it.
Just not vote? That little part of me is still struggling with that, as that is read as “apathy” or “disinterest,” neither of which is the problem. Quite the opposite!
I would love to see a “None of the Above” choice on all ballots so that those like me can at least “vote,” if only to register our rejection of the options presented.
Here are some people who are thinking along these same lines:
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2014/02/01/bill-would-allow-nh-voters-to-vote-none-of-the-above/
Voting is immoral. No one has the right to rule. When you vote, for anybody, you are implicitly condoning a system of slavery in which the winner will use force and threats of murder to control everyone else. The only people who have a right to complain are those who do not participate in the system. Your position is akin to saying that we have to rape women in order to complain about rape.
In Australia we are fined if we don’t vote. Your name is marked off in a book and you go into a booth and vote. I have no faith in either party, and am disgusted at what is done in my name, don’t know the independents, and vote for none. I refuse to vote for the lesser of two evils.
The news that so many Americans have lost faith in their government is great. Hopefully this poll heralds huge changes in the future.
Seriously? Fined? It’s as though one is being extorted to validate the process not unlike the dictator who holds an election and the “electorate” either votes for the dictator who is the only candidate, or they don’t vote at all.
Lucky for us here in the land of the free we don’t tolerate such shenanigans. We vote for the 2 party candidates who have been qualified, even groomed well in advance, by the CFR (for at least the last 50 years of federal elections and perhaps much longer) and some token independent(to “legitimize” the “election”)but who are essentially ignored and/or are an object of ridicule by the MSM. See the difference? I don’t either.
Love your reply! And I can’t spot the difference either,
And Gallup, the poll makers here, have a problem: Big Business is Big Government. ObamaCare and the bank bailout for the connected are wonderful examples. So is the 2003 invasion of Iraq, plus the massive “deregulation” of the Reagan and Clinton eras. And let’s not forget the first big bank bailout of the last 30 years, the Reagan era failure of Continental Illinois.
So socialism for the connected of either of those parties.
Gallup lost a lot of credibility in the fiasco of its pre2012 presidential election polling.