Jim D posits a good cop / bad cop Dem-GOP scam, but then continues:
> Like even the best analogies, this one leaves something out, specifically
> divisions _within_ the two parties.
No problem about that; where's your yin-yang sense? There's just enough
contradictory material within each side and its individuals to make
a really convincing "Mutt & Jeff" (official cop parlance) possible.
Once in a while even Jesse Helms will exhale something half-plausible.
> But those divisions can only be
> exploited if we put constant and growing pressure on both parties from the
> outside, i.e., extra-electoral action.
Right you are, Jim; I think I have an extra M-1 somewhere in the attic.
Even the GOPs improve when mass
> discontent becomes overt: remember that it was Nixon who instituted both
> OSHA (the occupational safety law) and the EPA (a dose of eco-sanity). He
> did so partly to try to undermine the anti-war and other
> anti-establishmentarian movements.
I suspect the insurance lobby and Ma Nature herself were behind those two,
whatever the chanters in Lafayette Park may have grandly imagined.
(Neither of these programs were as good
> as they could have been, but that simply tells us that more pressure is
> needed. BTW, the example of Nixon should remind us of how pitiful Clinton
> is.) Rather than hoping that the "good czar" ("Free Willy" Clinton) will
> shower us with gifts, we have to keep up the pressure.
Ah, tovarisch, you betray a subliminal understanding of our position in
history after all. Indeed, the cavalry is already collecting itself in
the side streets, having been made privy to the market's true condition.
valis
