(Vermont Senator Bernie) Sanders agrees, saying that “where the money comes from” is definitely one of the reasons that the so-called liberals in Washington – i.e. the Democrats – tend not to get too heavily into financial issues that affect ordinary people. This basically regressive electoral formula has been a staple of the Democratic Party ever since the Walter Mondale fiasco in the mid-eighties prompted a few shrewd Washington insiders to create the notorious “pro-business” political formula of the Democratic Leadership Council, which sought to end the party’s dependence upon labor money by announcing a new willingness to sell out on financial issues in exchange for support from Wall Street. Once the DLC’s financial strategy helped get Bill Clinton elected, no one in Washington ever again bothered to question the wisdom of the political compromises it required.
Within a decade, the process was automatic – Citibank gives money to Tom Daschle, Tom Daschle crafts the hideous Bankruptcy Bill, and suddenly the Midwestern union member who was laid off in the wake of Democrat-passed NAFTA can’t even declare bankruptcy to get out from the credit card debt he incurred in his unemployment. He will now probably suck eggs for the rest of his life, paying off credit card debt year after year at a snail’s pace while working as a non-union butcher in a Wal-Mart in Butte. Royally screwed twice by the Democratic Party he voted for, he will almost certainly decide to vote Republican the first time he opens up the door to find four pimply college students wearing I READ BANNED BOOKS t-shirts taking up a collection to agitate for dolphin-safe tuna.
---snip---
What makes the American left silly? Things that in a vacuum should be logical impossibilities are frighteningly common in lefty political scenes. The word “oppression” escaping, for any reason, the mouths of kids whose parents are paying 20 grand for them to go to private colleges. Academics in Priuses using the word “Amerika.” Ebonics, Fanetiks, and other such insane institutional manifestations of white guilt. Combat berets. Combat berets in conjunction with designer coffees. Combat berets in conjunction with designer coffees consumed at leisure in between conversational comparisons of America to Nazi Germany.
We all know where this stuff comes from. Anyone who’s ever been to a lefty political meeting knows the deal – the problem is the “spirit of inclusiveness” stretched to the limits of absurdity. The post-sixties dogma that everyone’s viewpoint is legitimate, everyone‘s choice about anything (lifestyle, gender, ethnicity, even class) is valid, that’s now so totally ingrained that at every single meeting, every time some yutz gets up and starts rambling about anything, no matter how ridiculous, no one ever tells him to shut the fuck up. Next thing you know, you’ve got guys on stilts wearing mime makeup and Cat-in-the-Hat striped top-hats leading a half-million people at an anti-war rally. Why is that guy there? Because no one told him that war is a matter of life and death and that he should leave his fucking stilts at home.
The Yuppie Left is also active in NOLA. The Yuppie Left in New Orleans does things like "reform" the school system by contracting its management out to a thousand little corruptible fiefdoms. The Yuppie Left in New Orleans fawns all over arrogant "smart, tough leaders" like Ed Blakely because he allows them to throw the term "buffoon" around in resentful reference to people with a bit less refinement and class than they are endowed with. The Yuppie Left screams loudly in support of the faster and longer incarceration of teenagers, random traffic stops, and police cameras on city streets. The Yuppie Left in New Orleans likes "mixed-income housing." They're really big on the broken window theory. The Yuppie Left in New Orleans supported "reformer-businessman" Ray Nagin in 2002. They just have no idea what could have happened to him since then... that flood must have really stressed him out or something. The Yuppie Left in New Orleans is endlessly titillated by the daily headlines about the crooks and cronies associated with Dollar Bill and Marc Morial... as though such grand strokes of justice mean the End to All Political Corruption Ever.
The Yuppie Left in New Orleans would, I suppose, be kind of cute... if they didn't give me such a blinding headache.
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