With trillions of dollars at stake, the plutocrats of the healthcare-financial complex can be forgiven the impulse to go to any length to control the outcome of the current insurance debate; or, at least, that impulse can be understood. They are not the first nor will they be the last incarnations of the self-styled Masters of the Universe to have to scramble to stay on the gravy train at the expense of everyone else; nor is their confidence misplaced. This is an old, old story, and throughout most of history, their side has won. This time, however, the evidence suggests that the MOTU might have a fight on their hands. America has a wonderful opportunity for deep, meaningful, lasting change.
American populism is thriving, on both the right and the left, and from the bottom up. People are as mad as hell and they don't want to take it any more, and they have awfully good reasons for that point of view. Wages and income continue their prolonged collapse, living standards decline and degrade, debt and destitution threaten to finally hollow out the remaining shards of America's self-respect and no element in society seems to deserve confidence that it will function as expected or will help to solve any problem. And in many ways, right-wing and left-wing populism are overlapping and coming to the same conclusions from different directions: that the people responsible for our predicament, broadly speaking, are actually profiting off the collapse of America . As the squeeze gets worse, the anger will rise If a real coalition could develop, populist change would fall from the tree.
The next time you see coverage of a teabag party, look at the faces in the crowd and consider how those people would answer the following questions: Do we need more free trade, or less? Should the government carry out more bailouts for companies "too big to fail," or not? Do Wall Street and Corporate America need more regulation, oversight, and prosecution, or less? Do we have too many, too few, or just the right amount of jobs being outsourced? Should America have more or less manufacturing than it does now? Should we have more, fewer, or the same number of foreign obligations that we do right now? Are CEOs overpaid, or not? Should the government privatize and outsource its contracting, or not? Are corporations paying their fair share of taxes, or not?
It is only a guess, but my guess is that a majority of them would answer these questions the way that I and many, many non-conservatives would answer. Soak the corporations, and break them up if you have to. Reacquaint the CEO class with real fear of prison, scandal, ruin, poverty, and humiliation, when appropriate. Bring the jobs, the factories, the cash, and the troops home where they belong, and mind our own damn business for a change. Restore the regulatory regime and trade and labor policies that built the most affluent nation in the history of the world.
There is no doubt that such a point of view would find a welcome in the hearts of many -- on some issues, perhaps a majority -- of those attending the teabag rallies, throwing the tantrums at the town hall meetings,and shouting Hosannas to Rush and Michael Savage, even as they agree, incidentally, with Bernie Sanders, Thom Hartmannn, and Howard Zinn. And me.
In other words, populism has a right-wing an a left-wing accent. But is it more than just an accent? Do the differences outweigh the similarities? And why the fight?
The better question is who does the fighting benefit. As long as the American populists can be divided, they can be marginalized and conquered. And that serves only the interests of those who got us into this economic quagmire in the first place -- the globalist, free-trade, neocon, tax cutting, supply side, open border, deregulating Chicago School MOTUs who even today disdain the reality of the consequences of their own irresponsible, indulgent narcissism, and their celebrity lickspittles. (Henry Paulson, anyone? Alan Greenspan? Robert Rubin?) The suicidal and inane policies put into place by these and others are held in place, principally, by a sort of ongoing low-level cultural combat which makes effective opposition highly problematic.
Populists of either wing who really want to get something accomplished should find a way to look beyond stupid stereotypes about the other wing. Many liberals take pride in dismissing conservatives as toothless racists one generation away from outdoor plumbing. Many conservatives think liberals spend their weekends on ecoterrorism during the day and dressing up like Barbara Streisand at night. To the extent this divides them on issues they otherwise agree on, this is mighty expensive humor. To the extent that political leaders, talk-show hosts, and journalists feed this divide -- and for many of them, it is their stock in trade -- they are complicit in our deadly stalemate.
There is a wonderful documentary called Pumping Iron about the 70s subculture of competitive bodybuilding. The star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, demonstrates vividly the dynamic at work here. He managed, through a combination of humor, arrogance, and out sized success, to make himself the focus of his competitors in such a way that they could not focus on their own efforts -- they were thinking of him and not their own best. Similarly, today, a lot of conservatives are more interested in saving America from tree-hugging hairies than in solving any problems, and the energy of a lot of liberals is spent tendentiously denouncing the evil fascist lurking in the heart of every Republican, at the expense of real attention to the larger good. In both cases, the only result is division, isolation, and political irrelevance.
As long as right-wing and left-wing populism continue to scream and shout inane plattitudes at each other, they dismiss the possibility of effective political coalition. But if the America of George Wallace, Merle Haggard, and Barry Goldwater can make strange bedfellows and common cause with the America of Woody Guthrie, Martin Luther King, and Ted Kennedy on the issues on which common ground is possible -- and those issues are many and significant -- the political momentum would be almost irresistible.
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