Dems & Doze

Readers of the Son, both casual and regulars, know that I distrust (to put it mildly) the two major parties, and I make my feelings plain. No hidden meanings here. And yes, I repeat myself more than I would like, but honestly, there are only so many ways one can assess the American political structure. There are times when I'm tempted to go Lance Mannion, and simply write about film, comedy, and music, for there I can go much deeper and derive more joy than dealing with the latest Beltway bullshit. But as the old saying goes, if you don't define your political space, it will be defined for you. So here I remain, mucking through the endless falling crap.

I say all this as a reminder to you and to myself that we are entering a new phase of American political reality, not new in the sense that it's unprecedented, but new in that the other wing of the ownership party is looking to clean up Bush's many messes, and reset US imperial policy on a more "constructive" course. That's the Democrats' function, especially now, with much of the American elite appalled at Bush's extreme mismanagement. This is how our system works, for something this powerful and profitable to those at or near the top isn't going down without a serious struggle. The "miracle of democracy" is, at bottom, an attempt to keep the status quo from collapsing, and so the Dems are brought in to brace the beams and flush out those elements that are undermining the larger structure. Rebuilding the thing or committing to extensive repairs is the furthest thing from the mules' minds.

Predictably, many liberals see all this as some kind of political overhaul, if not a minor revolution. As I said last week, this is what they're supposed to do: having sold themselves on the premise, they now attempt to sell the premise to the rest of us. And if we refuse to buy into it, and prefer instead to deal with the structure as a whole, then the attacks begin. I've been called many things, both at other blogs and in private emails. I'm utopian. I live in my parents' basement. I'm politically adolescent. I don't know how the system really works. I hold the Dems to too high a standard. I'm really a rightwinger. I'm a sectarian asshole. I helped defeat Gore/Lieberman in 2000 and Bush is all my fault. And so on. You know the tune.

I won't review, yet again, my actual political history, much of which consisted of working with and voting for Dems. I even voted Dem in the last election, picking Jennifer Granholm over Dick DeVos for governor, since DeVos would've been much worse for Michigan than the centrist Granholm (of course, I refused to vote for the vile Debbie Stabenow, for reasons I've already stated). The point is, I'm very much aware of the differences between the mules and the GOP. How could I not? The problem, which we've seen for some time and are currently experiencing at a feverish pitch, is that too many liberals have convinced themselves that the differences are astronomical, that the brightest, purest light is fighting a bottomless, darker evil. Think I exaggerate? Go to any of the major lib sites and scroll around. Nancy Pelosi is to them what Trotsky is to the Fourth International.

In a way, I can understand this need for fantasy. After all, in a fixed, corrupt system like ours, where real politics is reserved for elite players and their advisers, trying to tackle what actually exists can seem daunting for some, if not completely impossible, and this usually leads to an abandonment of hope and a steady slide into apolitical cynicism. I've seen it too many times in my adult life, and have experienced it myself. The Real Deal is a savage motherfucker, and if you get too close you will get burned or chewed to bits. I've known several well-meaning, intelligent people who worked on Capitol Hill, and witnessed up close their political dismemberment. It's a tragic sight to see, and it happens more often than not. It's another way the system defends itself, and being a murderous entity, its defensive methods are meant to hurt and cause lasting pain.

Instead of grappling with that reality, where even the tiniest victory is in no way guaranteed, a good number of libs openly pretend that the political wing they support is somehow outside of this system's nastiness, or perhaps in direct opposition to it. You can recite their party's actual and verifiable history all night long, and for many of them, it doesn't matter. They need the Dems to be a certain way and that's that. Who cares what horrors earlier Dems unleashed? And anyway, it's all probably Republican propaganda.

The current fantasy making the rounds is that Pelosi and Harry Reid are somehow "antiwar," and this is bolstered by a letter the two of them recently sent to Bush. Now, whatever Nancy Pelosi's current stand on Iraq really is, and I have no doubt that she, like a lot of elite Americans, are tactically opposed to Bush's proposed troop "surge," the new Speaker of the House is hardly antiwar. There's no way a pro-war party like the Dems would promote someone who opposed their view that the US has a right to attack anyone it wants, so long as it's in the "national interest." If that were the case, Dennis Kucinich would be prominent among senior Dems. The invasion of Iraq carried with it a ton of risks, and so there was elite opposition to it --- not because of some philosophical hostility to imperialism, but because the invasion could very well damage the US military system, as well as incite anti-American hatred worldwide. Of course, this has pretty much transpired, which is why Dem leaders like Pelosi and Reid are against further escalation. If there weren't powerful forces supporting them, neither of these pols would dare broach the subject. "Redeployment," on the other hand, is perfectly acceptable --- indeed, necessary, if the US imperial project in the Middle East is to survive. And that, above all, is what Pelosi and Reid are trying to salvage. A complete and total pullout from Iraq is simply not going to happen, not voluntarily, anyway; and it definitely is not going to happen under the gaze of a San Francisco Dem.

If you find me too harsh on Pelosi, consider this: a report in the London Sunday Times cited sources in the Israel Defense Forces that Israel is rehearsing a possible air strike on an Iranian enrichment plant using low-yield nuclear weapons. Of course, the Israeli government immediately denied this, but the story's intended effect has gotten through. Now, assuming this story is true, and I know it's a stretch to imagine the IAF bombing another country, but if this actually goes down, how will the "antiwar" and all-around progressive Nancy Pelosi react? Would she oppose it? Denounce it? Call for a freeze on military "aid" to Israel? Given her complete support for Israel's assault on Lebanon last summer, I seriously doubt that, suddenly, Pelosi would go in the opposite direction, especially now that she's House Speaker. That would be a rebuke of her institutional position and sure political suicide. Like the rest of the Dems, with perhaps one or two minor exceptions, Pelosi would applaud such an attack and call for more if Israel deemed it vital to its "national interest" (in this case, remaining the sole nuclear power in the Middle East).

So, we know how the "antiwar" Pelosi would react. But what of her fawning chorus of libloggers? How would they respond to such an attack? Would they criticize their political darling and wake up to what she actually represents? Or would they merely make, at best, a few critical peeps and fall back into line? I think the answer is obvious. But then again, I can see only so much from the basement stairs.