The United States of Corporations. Choice is not on the menu. "The Best We Can Do."

[Armstead]

I'm just going to say it. In a nation of 318 million people, when it comes down to the wire we end up with a choice between a bigoted GOP huckster or the embodiment of a system of elite cronyism and Corporate/Wall St. Power.

Neither of whom is especially popular with the nation as a whole.

Regardless of Bernie, the bigger question remains. This is the Best we can do?

We've allowed the Big Pendulum of History to stay far to the right since around 1980. But the nation is primed for a swing back in a leftward direction. Not in a "radical" way, but in a mainstream way back to a reassertion of The Public Interest over Big Money/Big Power,

But we don't want to. Instead it's Back to the 1980's (Trump) and 1990's (Clinton)

We choose once again NOT to be aspirational. We choose to ignore the core problems of the Concentration of Wealth and Power and Systemic Corruption and the complete Sell Off of the remnants of Democracy.

We buy into Orwellian propaganda that we should not want better.

"It's about power, Winston. It's all about power for its own sake."

Simply rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. "Would you like Coke or Pepsi while watching the ship head straight for that iceburg?"


Yeah. I'm a little depressed at the likely outcome

It's too bad that the only cure for political depression during the general election will be to tune it out.

Wasteland of the Free (Written in the 1990's)
Iris Dement

We got preachers dealing in politics and diamond mines
and their speech is growing increasingly unkind
They say they are Christ's disciples
but they don't look like Jesus to me
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

We got politicians running races on corporate cash
Now don't tell me they don't turn around and kiss them peoples' ass
You may call me old-fashioned
but that don't fit my picture of a true democracy
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

We got CEO's making two hundred times the workers' pay
but they'll fight like hell against raising the minimum wage
and If you don't like it, mister, they'll ship your job
to some third-world country 'cross the sea
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

Living in the wasteland of the free
where the poor have now become the enemy
Let's blame our troubles on the weak ones
Sounds like some kind of Hitler remedy
Living in the wasteland of the free

We got little kids with guns fighting inner city wars
So what do we do, we put these little kids behind prison doors
and we call ourselves the advanced civilization
that sounds like crap to me
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

We got high-school kids running 'round in Calvin Klein and Guess
who cannot pass a sixth-grade reading test
but if you ask them, they can tell you
the name of every crotch on mTV
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

We kill for oil, then we throw a party when we win
Some guy refuses to fight, and we call that the sin
but he's standing up for what he believes in
and that seems pretty damned American to me
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

Living in the wasteland of the free
where the poor have now become the enemy
Let's blame our troubles on the weak ones
Sounds like some kind of Hitler remedy
Living in the wasteland of the free

While we sit gloating in our greatness
justice is sinking to the bottom of the sea
Living in the wasteland of the free
Living in the wasteland of the free
Living in the wasteland of the free

Read more: Iris Dement - Wasteland Of The Free Lyrics | MetroLyrics
http://www.metrolyrics.com/wasteland-of-the-free-lyrics-iris-dement.html
---------------------------

America 6.0 Steve Earle

Look at ya
Yeah, take a look in the mirror now tell me what you see
Another satisfied customer in the front of the line for the American dream
I remember when we was both out on the boulevard
Talkin' revolution and singin' the blues
Nowadays it's letters to the editor and cheatin' on our taxes
Is the best that we can do
Come on

Look around
There's doctors down on Wall Street
Sharpenin' their scalpels and tryin' to cut a deal
Meanwhile, back at the hospital
We got accountants playin' God and countin' out the pills
Yeah, I know, that sucks ??? that your HMO
Ain't doin' what you thought it would do
But everybody's gotta die sometime and we can't save everybody
It's the best that we can do

Four score and a hundred and fifty years ago
Our forefathers made us equal as long as we can pay
Yeah, well maybe that wasn't exactly what they was thinkin'
Version six-point-oh of the American way
But hey we can just build a great wall around the country club
To keep the riff-raff out until the slump is through
Yeah, I realize that ain't exactly democratic, but it's either them or us and
And it's the best we can do

Yeah, passionely conservative
It's the best we can do

Conservatively passionate
It's the best we can do

Meanwhile, still thinkin'
Hey, let's wage a war on drugs
It's the best we can do
Well, I don't know about you, but I kinda dig this global warming thing

Songwriters
STEVE EARLE

Published by
Lyrics © BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT US, LLC
http://www.metrolyrics.com/amerika-v-60-the-best-we-can-do-lyrics-steve-earle.html



(Required disclaimer. Yeah I'll hold my nose and vote for The Clintons Inc. (TM) in November, just to ease my conscience about not wanting to contribute to the election of Trump.)

[Maedhros]

1. You and I see things in much the same way.

Choosing not to be aspirational, indeed.

[Armstead]

8. Gotta be "realistic" ya know

[BootinUp]

2. Assume that Bernie's campaign had an affect on

Hillary's policies, no strike that, Democratic Party policies. True or False?

If True, then I would say your point is invalid.

If False, be glad to discuss it.

[Armstead]

3. Time will tell

[Angry Dragon]

4. How can a sane person think that big money rules this country and the world??

By thinking and being sane ................

[Armstead]

5. Big Money goes 'round the world

"The Big Money"
Rush
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/rush/thebigmoney.html

Big money goes around the world
Big money underground
Big money got a mighty voice
Big money make no sound
Big money pull a million strings
Big money hold the prize
Big money weave a mighty web
Big money draw the flies

Sometimes pushing people around
Sometimes pulling out the rug
Sometimes pushing all the buttons
Sometimes pulling out the plug
It's the power and the glory
It's a war in paradise
It's a Cinderella story
On a tumble of the dice

Big money goes around the world
Big money take a cruise
Big money leave a mighty wake
Big money leave a bruise
Big money make a million dreams
Big money spin big deals
Big money make a mighty head
Big money spin big wheels

Sometimes building ivory towers
Sometimes knocking castles down
Sometimes building you a stairway
Lock you underground
It's that old time religion
It's the kingdom they would rule
It's the fool on television
Getting paid to play the fool

Big money goes around the world
Big money give and take
Big money done a power of good
Big money make mistakes
Big money got a heavy hand
Big money take control
Big money got a mean streak
Big money got no soul...

[Angry Dragon]

6. It seems you have a song for everything

[Armstead]

7. Just call me Elton

[Octafish]

9. Friendly Fascism

The professor served FDR and the New Deal Democrats and is remembered today for his work to reduce poverty. Among his accomplishments, he helped author the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act. Later he taught at CUNY and Wayne State University in Detroit, where he founded the Center for Urban Studies.

Friendly Fascism

The New Face of Power in America

by Bertram Gross
South End Press, 1980, paper

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Friendly_Fascism_BGross.html

INTRO EXCERPT...

Friendly fascism portrays two conflicting trends in the United States and other countries of the so-called "free world."

The first is a slow and powerful drift toward greater concentration of power and wealth in a repressive Big Business-Big Government partnership. This drift leads down the road toward a new and subtly manipulative form of corporatist serfdom. The phrase "friendly fascism" helps distinguish this possible future from the patently vicious corporatism of classic fascism in the past of Germany, Italy and Japan. It also contrasts with the friendly present of the dependent fascisms propped up by the U.S. government in El Salvador, Haiti, Argentina, Chile, South Korea, the Philippines and elsewhere.

The other is a slower and less powerful tendency for individuals and groups to seek greater participation in decisions affecting themselves and others. This trend goes beyond mere reaction to authoritarianism. It transcends the activities of progressive groups or movements and their use of formal democratic machinery. It is nourished by establishment promises-too often rendered false-of more human rights, civil rights and civil liberties. It is embodied in larger values of community, sharing, cooperation, service to others and basic morality as contrasted with crass materialism and dog-eat-dog competition. It affects power relations in the household, workplace, community, school, church, synagogue, and even the labyrinths of private and public bureaucracies. It could lead toward a truer democracy-and for this reason is bitterly fought...

These contradictory trends are woven fine into the fabric of highly industrialized capitalism. The unfolding logic of friendly fascist corporatism is rooted in "capitalist society's transnational growth and the groping responses to mounting crises in a dwindling capitalist world". Mind management and sophisticated repression become more attractive to would-be oligarchs when too many people try to convert democratic promises into reality. On the other hand, the alternative logic of true democracy is rooted in "humankind's long history of resistance to unjustified privilege" and in spontaneous or organized "reaction (other than fright or apathy) to concentrated power...and inequality, injustice or coercion".

A few years ago too many people closed their eyes to the indicators of the first tendency.

But events soon began to change perceptions.

The Ku Klux Klan and American Nazis crept out of the woodwork. An immoral minority of demagogues took to the airwaves. "Let me tell you something about the character of God," orated Jim Robison at a televised meeting personally endorsed by candidate Ronald Reagan. "If necessary, God would raise up a tyrant, a man who may not have the best ethics, to protect the freedom interests of the ethical and the godly." To protect Western oil companies, candidate Jimmy Carter proclaimed presidential willingness to send American troops into the Persian Gulf. Rosalyn Carter went further by telling an lowa campaign audience: "Jimmy is not afraid to declare war." Carter then proved himself unafraid to expand unemployment, presumably as an inflation cure, thereby reneging on his party's past full employment declarations.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/RiseFall_Friend_Fascism_FF.html

The good professor painted an accurate picture of what was to come.

James Madison

EXCERPT...

Despite the sharp differences from classic fascism, there are also some basic similarities. In each, a powerful oligarchy operates outside of, as well as through, the state. Each subverts constitutional government. Each suppresses rising demands for wider participation in decision making, the enforcement and enlargement of human rights, and genuine democracy. Each uses informational control and ideological flimflam to get lower and middle-class support for plans to expand the capital and power of the oligarchy and provide suitable rewards for political, professional, scientific, and cultural supporters.

A major difference is that under friendly fascism Big Government would do less pillaging of, and more pillaging for, Big Business. With much more integration than ever before among transnational corporations, Big Business would run less risk of control by any one state and enjoy more subservience by many states. In turn, stronger government support of transnational corporations, such as the large group of American companies with major holdings in South Africa, requires the active fostering of all latent conflicts among those segments of the American population that may object to this kind of foreign venture. It requires an Establishment with lower levels so extensive that few people or groups can attain significant power outside it, so flexible that many (perhaps most) dissenters and would-be revolutionaries can be incorporated within it. Above all, friendly fascism in any First World country today would use sophisticated control technologies far beyond the ken of the classic fascists.

p177
Although American hegemony can scarcely return in its Truman-Eisenhower-Kennedy-Johnson form, this does not necessarily signify the end of the American Century. Nor does communist and socialist advance on some fronts mark American and capitalist retreat on all fronts. There are unmistakable tendencies toward a rather thoroughgoing reconstruction of the entire "Free World." Robert Osgood sees a transitional period of "limited readjustment" and "retrenchment without disengagement," after which America could establish a "more enduring rationale of global influence." Looking at foreign policy under the Nixon administration, Robert W. Tucker sees no intention to "dismantle the empire" but rather a continued commitment to the view that "America must still remain the principal guarantor of a global order now openly and without equivocation identified with the status quo." He describes America as a "settled imperial power shorn of much of the former exuberance." George Liska looks forward to a future in which Americans, having become more mature in the handling of global affairs, will at last be the leaders of a true empire.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Specter_FriendlyFascism_FF.html

So. Here we are, 36 years on, and things have moved further right to make the USA into the Fourth Reich without many people noticing.