A New One From Joe Bageant:

(snip):

America’s small and medium sized towns are run entirely by their business class, those countless little sparkplugs of the American capitalist corporate machinery. They are where the institutionalized rip-off by the rich corporations finds its footing and support. Serving on every local governmental body, this mob of Kiwanis and Rotarians have connections, and collectively can get that 200 acres rezoned for Wal-Mart or a sewer line to that 2000-unit housing development at taxpayer expense. When it comes to getting things done locally for the big guys, these folks can heal the sick, raise the dead and give eyesight to the blind. They are God’s gift to the big non-union companies and the chip plants looking for a fresh river to piss cadmium into -- the Rotarian, Lions, Kiwanis Club can-do boys. What makes them especially dangerous is that they are politically active, and have a cumulative effect on the national corps politique.

Like the place I write from, Winchester, Virginia, many heartland towns are little feudal systems ruled by local networks of moneyed families. It is the part of our community’s life you cannot see from the road or your hotel room and certainly will not appear in the tourist brochure for historic Winchester. It is in the interest of these well-heeled conservative provincials to maintain a state with low taxes, few or no local regulations, no unions, a cheap school system and a Chamber of Commerce with the entire state senate on its speed dial. At the same time they control local elected offices and municipal boards. After generations of shaving down the soap bars in the back room and soaking the pork chops in water for extra weight on the scales, these senseless little horse fuckers have truly taken over the political and economic debate (which are one and the same because in America politics is simply the system used by the rich to manage their money.) As in “Fuck the scenic creek and the historic old battlefield, city government says you’re getting an Outback Steakhouse!” Despite how it seems, the devil does not live in Winchester, Virginia. He just shits here.


http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar05/Bageant0321.htm

I enjoy this guy's rollicking style.

"(And to those who will surely say I am being an apologist for the rich, let me remind you that, as a bona fide inbred redneck, I am far more likely to shoot their feeble feckless asses than you are. It’s in my blood, though I manage to restrain myself.)"

"So the neocon business class politicians tell Raynetta the liberals are going to make all her grandchildren wear condoms to school and tell Bobby an urban coalition (“Urban” being the code word for African-American) is going to take his daddy’s heirloom gun away from him. Works every time. Just like the “all unions are crooked” and the “liberals will take away your guns” line worked on my dad."

I don't think so.

This is as it has been for generations.

But of course lately it's taking on a more ominous tone and with more devastating results to the quality of life in America.

But still not news.

While what Bageant writes isn't anything new, many liberals and Democrats fail to understand or are completely oblivious to cultural currents sweeping across the US. What Bageant's work alludes to is that the very same people who are joining militias or getting wrapped up in fundamentalist religion are the very same people organized by the left in the 1920s and 1930s. This points to a basic failure of the left to organize a great many people who may indeed be sympathetic to traditional left struggles, when they are not being distracted by fear and other BS that is. Much of that failure has to do with a Democratic Party that has veered sharply to the right in recent decades, and leftists and liberals who continue to blindly cling on to the DP no matter what. In the absence of a clear -- on fundamental issues -- between the two business parties, a vacuum is created in which the far right and religious hucksters are quick to easily fill.