Forgotten what political reform looks like? See this reminder by Taylor Swift.

Larry Kummer, Editor

11 years ago

Summary: Reform movements in America have almost entirely burnt out, with Hope & Change Nobel Peace Prize laureate Obama stamping out the embers. Yet the sparks remain and will catch fire again, sometime. Will we recognize harbingers of change after so many disappointments? See this new video by Taylor Swift; it shows what to look for. (2nd post of 2 today.)

The rash of police shootings has the Left hitting the streets again (like OWS but more vigorously), waving placards demanding things while delusionally marching along their road to irrelevancy — as described in this typical twitter comment (name omitted):

Its all coming down. No amount of armor can stop that now. The Left is in the streets again, the only place that matters right now. The endgame is same whether the street explodes and burns it all down from the bottom or the top finally loses control of ridiculous maths experiment on Wall Street and burns down from there. If the ‘white majority’ wish to be Fascists history shows what is in store for them.

As 2016 looms ahead the center-Left (i.e., liberals) prepare their bid for power by running long-serving, 67-year old, boring mediocrity Hillary Clinton. She’ll read her lines to generate support from the appropriate demographic and special interest groups. She’ll sing the Hope and Change, and the Democratic Party’s core will hum along with her. But nobody will believe. All but the core know she’s a creature of the banks, the war machine, and the mega-corps. Since the 1% don’t care about the proles mating habits and leisure pursuits, she’ll advocate a miscellany of social reforms (conflict about social policies creates a facade of conflict between the two parties).

Both Left and Liberals in their own way block meaningful efforts to reform America. They give us a choice of paths: boring or futile. Neither taps the public energy necessary to overcome the unassailable might of money. Obama did so in a slight way, showing the potential magnitude of the force available to us — but was limited by the insincerity of his campaign (obvious even in February 2008).

How can we identify a powerful political reform movement in its early stages? Here’s what it looks like:

Taylor Swift’s video shows us the elements of success in politics as well as music. A leader (she’s central in every segment), strong yet everyman (everywoman), in charge yet willing to be fallible in public. A competent team — the screen overflows with the talent of the supporting artists. And strong message that appeals to us, to who we are, to what we want, and to our dreams. Plus music.

Instead the Left gives us weak tea: slogans and amateur night productions. Journalists and advertisers loved the street festivals of the Occupy Wall Street movement. It created a sensation — clickbait for ten thousand articles — then vanished without a trace. Now the Left brings us new campaigns: fixing a fake “rape culture” on college campuses with crackpot measures (e.g., California’s explicit consent law, campus crusades crushing men’s rights), and protests in Ferguson about a questionable shooting of a man who had just robbed a store and then attacked a policeman in his car (police brutality is a serious problem, but this chooses the wrong ground on which to fight).

Do you want reform but have a low tolerance for crazy? We know what to expect from Hillary Clinton. Liberal presidents put inexperienced people in high offices: buddies, hot academics with theories, and skilled political hucksters), leavened with Wall Street bankers and re-treads from Republican administrations. We’ll get massive domestic surveillance, growing secrecy (plus persecution of whistle-blowers), increasingly powerful security agencies, bank bailouts as needed, and wars (humanitarian!) whether needed or not. Plus the occasional meaningful reform (e.g., ObamaCare, useful even after the maddening enrollment process).

So what do we do? Increasingly we give up. Obama’s Hope and Change administration couldn’t have done better if designed to discourage reform. Turnout in the 2014 election was the lowest in 72 years. The 1% applaud our decision, allowing them to burn the America-that-once-was and build a New America on its ruins. How pitiful for the people of a great nation, abundantly blessed with wealth and talent, inheritors of the Republic’s invincible democratic machinery.

In a different video Taylor Swift shows us a parable of modern American politics: mad, delusional, emotional, self-destructive. We pick we candidates, fall in love, build them up, and tear them down. Meanwhile behind the scenes the agents of the 1% run America, intellects cool and unsympathetic. As we are today, perhaps that’s for the best.

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Although discouraged, I remain confident that somewhere in America there burns a spark that eventually will start a fire. Someday the forecast for November’s election day will be (in the words of Kate Beckett) “sunny, chance of ass-kicking.”