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[Jackpine Radical]

3. I think this is fine for GD.

And we should probably do more of it.

I think it's a moderately complicated situation.

To lay a bit of groundwork, I will start by saying that the government is completely unresponsive to the needs of the public, except insofar as those needs match the desires of the ruling corporations. Thus we were allowed to have ACA but not universal health care because it served the interests of the insurance companies (e.g. guaranteeing them a captive pool of young, healthy people to insure), while incidentally actually doing some good for some of the public. (But many people now have insurance that they can't use because of the copays, deductibles, & exclusions).

Likewise, our Corporate Masters really don't care one way or the other about gay rights, women's rights, etc. because these matters don't much affect their pathways to profit. What they actually care about are things like deregulation, stifling (or, better, absorbing) competition,etc.

To be an acceptable candidate, you have to be "right" on the economic issues, no matter your party. On the social issues you are free to fight it out with the other side. The Big Guys don't care who wins at that level, but it serves their interests to continue the illusion that there are two parties with significant differences between them.

The one social issue that the Big Guys might care about is racial/ethnic discrimination. One of the sickest features of human nature, at least as it is expressed in this country, lies in the fact that some people will put up with almost any abuse or deprivation as long as they are assured that there is a class of people worse off than them, upon whom they might look down. The single best tool for controlling the masses is to play them off against each other. So Joe Sixpack knows damn well who's causing his problems. It's those (color-coded for easy recognition) dark folks down the street with their welfare Cadillacs.

So the parties are left to fight it out on issues that don't matter much to their masters, who really don't care whether it's a corporate Republican or a corporate Democrat as long as they vote to deregulate, keep up the military expenditures, and otherwise behave themselves.

Boehner is known to have declared, back in 2009, that their purpose was to destroy the Obama Presidency. I see it as pure partisanship, fueled with racism. I have no idea if Boehner is a racist in his (alleged) soul, but it doesn't matter; he's playing racist dog whistles to a racist audience.

I see the Republicans as divided into 2 groups: the corporatists and the Tea Party. For the most part, the corporatists are cynical, grandiose manipulators, and the Tea Partiers are largely useful fools who believe their own horseshit.