ACA Repeal/Replace: Progressives Face Moral Dilemma

[David Horn]

(09-12-2017, 11:59 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(09-12-2017, 09:08 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I have my neo-Marxist theory. We Americans have the original elite of big rural landowners, basically planters without the slaves; the financiers and industrialists that Marx saw as the arch-fiends of capitalism; the managerial elite that Milovan Djilas saw in his The New Class; big urban landlords (Donald Trump is the archetype), and organized crime.   A few people make the money, much of it as economic rent, and the rest of us are expected to put on theatrical smiles as we sweat.

With the possible exception of the mobsters, whose politics are murky, the other elites are reactiona4ry in their political and economic agendas. They want as productive system in which they exact every bit of profit possible. We have been collecting elites devoid of responsibility but demanding of us all. In no way are they in competition; they are in concert. But the concert isn't something like Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto and Brahms' Fourth Symphony. It is a cacophony of cruelty.

Some of Piketty's followers are calling this the second Gilded Age.  A focus on elites, division of wealth and a government that isn't really helping might make link up possible.  I won't argue too much against your basic view from the past.

The question is how to break up the alliance between the elites and the government that allows the division of wealth...

You had some other points worth discussing, but let me address just this one.  Let's start with the obvious, that power abhors a vacuum.  If the power over government is weakly held by the public in general, then the most powerful private actors are the ones most likely to hold sway.  Citizens United made that possible, and it's playing out in real time.  As long as the public is kept at each other throats, this will continue. 

ALEC has been successful at rewriting the rules at state and local levels, because the public is simply not paying attention.  Now we have that same methodology being applied at the Federal level.  There will either be a backlash, or the current momentum will continue until the process is complete.