WASHINGTON -- Dick Lugar was a nice guy who stayed too long. But his crushing loss is also a valid data point in a profound and troubling trend, obvious not only in politics but in every other aspect of American life.
We are losing the mediating middle of everything, and the result is a country paralyzed by social and economic as well as political division.
The remorseless logic of global capital (think: big banks and super PACs) and the middleman-crushing power of the Internet (think: Amazon and the Tea Party) are combining to end not only the "small r" republican vision of the Founders but also many essential, intermediating business and social structures.
The Founders feared both the Monarch and the Mob. Now the salving, balancing middle is being ground to dust between the two.
Like an engine without oil or a knee without cartilage, we are in danger of seizing up. We are losing many of our lesser but essential sources of authority, credit, guidance, service and judgment. Face-to-face dealings, accidental acquaintances, the happenstances of geography and commerce are being replaced by a net-based cacophony of political flash mobs, stovepiped thinking and mail-order trade for virtually every product and service.
A partial list of who is under pressure: families with time to be a family, independent-minded elected representatives, small farmers not beholden to Monsanto or Cargill, county chairmen, "big tent" politics, independent business and sales agents, weekly newspapers, local radio and TV stations, teachers with freedom to teach, principals with latitude to run their schools, local religious leaders respected for their character and judgment.
In politics, the national parties have ceased to be mechanisms of consensus or even mechanisms at all. The power resides entirely with ideological, commercial or personal money.
Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, two cool, aloof, effective assemblers of the new machinery, rely entirely on their own purpose-built campaigns, which have allegiance to no one but them.
Congress is now a home for the politically incapacitated. Senators who once had a year or two to attempt statesmanship and independent thought begin running for reelection even before they are sworn in.
As for the media, the days are long gone when a news anchor like Walter Cronkite could end his broadcast by saying, "And that's the way it is," and most people in the country would nod in agreement. There are no such truly unifying figures today, and most of the money in televised news is spent on ideologically discrete presentations of it.
The Internet makes possible the assembly of new intermediating institutions, but those are still in their infancy for the most part. In the meantime, mighty and basically unaccountable companies such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and others conduct, facilitate and dominate monarch-to-mob-and-back commerce.
To fend off both the monarchy and the mob, the Founders resurrected the Roman ideal of republican government, updated with a Newtonian clockwork of countervailing powers. They saw further protection against political tyranny in an economy of widely dispersed private property -- the ideal for them was the English yeomanry -- and in a rich social soil of education, family and homage to faith that would produce solid citizens.
Today, the Monarchy isn't a Hanoverian in a dusty wig, but rather a silent alliance between an all-knowing, all-benefit-dispensing Washington and billionaires (real people or corporate "people") given new freedom to exert their power by spending at will.
Today, the Mob isn't a witch hunt in Salem, but rather an Internet increasingly ruled by the worship of the viral and made profitable largely by companies that specialize in the Schumpeterian work of wiping out social supply lines of local human interaction with generations or even millennia of tradition.
The risk is that in the name of democracy, we are going to destroy it; that in the name of freedom, we are going to lose it; and that in the name of bringing the budget under control and saving the middle class, we are going to lose both to the Monarchy and the Mob.
Other than that, things are going fine.
Follow Howard Fineman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/howardfineman
Steve Lombardo: Election Monitor: Obama Campaign Sets Out to Define Romney
Jeffrey Laurenti: Lugar's Loss and Jesse's Ghost
 |
 |
|
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
Now I'm depressed.
this should be the century of the people and by the people. there are enough of us educated and technologically savvy to institute change...people-elevating change. but the old marrige of money and privilege is united against the century's old status quo.
progress...in the hands of the people...must be the new paradigm. wealth accessible to all...charity undenied the halt...has to be achieved now or we are headed for a darker age than we have ever seen.
" ask not what you can do for yourself, but what you can do for your fellow man to raise all boats." the old institutions of government, the church, the press, the unions don't work for us. it's time to change the lot.
the middle way has failed
So the approach, the overall theme we need to put forth (with moderates and independents in mind) is to say that in this time of such critical problems, a rational grasp of reality is essential. We absolutely cannot afford to have people so willing to live in the fantasy world of ideological self-delusion running things.
As part of the strategy, every time they put forth lies or distortions, ads are run with those as examples of this theme of why we must have serious, rational people in power.
At the same time, we have an economy which can't continue in the status quo. Those same whites who are angry at losing demographic power are rushing to grab as much control of the economy as possible. This has led to destruction of most standards of business ethics, something which was once a point of conservative pride. Bankers and insurance executives were generally staid and, well, boring; now they make drug dealers look respectable. There is something that is barely short of outright nihilism, but again, this is down to a small segment of the population. The corruption of business and politics is the primary threat; if that isn't stopped by the people, then we will fail as an economy and as a nation. Deficits are a small issue compared to the emerging plutocracy.
With our news media currently answering only to the money interests, serious and needed information will not be supplied to those that do not take the time to seek REAL information.
I can only see matters getting further out of reach unless the American Public gets more active.
I can hope for that to happen but hope will not make it happen.
Sign!
Really?
There is no center because the right is crazy. They deny facts, deny science, deny rights painfully created over centuries, and all in the name of a stupid economic theory and a foolish trust in the rich.
You aren't helping fight back when you blame people who are fighting back.
Radically skewed money and power are clearly the issue affecting every facet. This must be fixed. .
If Romney wins, his approach to reducing it will be more tax cuts for the wealthy, increased defense spending, and cuts to all social programs impacting the lower and middle classes. Every voter MUST understand this.
In 2007 there were 1600 individuals in this country who made OVER $400 million. Now if one assumes the AVERAGE made by those 1600 was $500 million (and that's a very conservative average) the total income made by those folks amounted to $800 BILLION! Understanding that at least 98% of this amount was taxed as capital gains, aka Willard's tax rate, the total federal tax taken would have been about $120 billion - about 40% of the $300 billion it should have been had we not had W as president. And that's just 1600 people in the top 1%!
The old, ill-applied argument about the rich paying too much is always proven false.
It's the Economy, Stupid !
Can't run anything on CR's....................simply a melodrama of waste.
House passed a Budget.................Senate plays melodrama.
DEBT Downgrade says it all !
Maybe someday the right wing of the middle class will realize they are being taken for a ride, not by liberals but by the 1%.