Crossposted from Liberal Street Fighter

The Republicans:

Unfortunately, more danger lurks in the responsiveness of the new GOP coalition to Christian evangelicals, fundamentalists and Pentecostals, who muster some 40 percent of the party electorate. Many millions believe that the Armageddon described in the Bible is coming soon. Chaos in the explosive Middle East, far from being a threat, actually heralds the second coming of Jesus Christ. Oil price spikes, murderous hurricanes, deadly tsunamis and melting polar ice caps lend further credence.

The potential interaction between the end-times electorate, inept pursuit of Persian Gulf oil, Washington’s multiple deceptions and the financial crisis that could follow a substantial liquidation by foreign holders of U.S. bonds is the stuff of nightmares. To watch U.S. voters enable such policies — the GOP coalition is unlikely to turn back — is depressing to someone who spent many years researching, watching and cheering those grass roots.

The Democrats:

In truth, Democratic party leaders will not, because they cannot, lead. Not a single one of them has the character, the courage, or the conviction to state simply what so many of the American people already know so well in their hearts: We are being ruthlessly lied to. We are less safe, not more so, as a result of our ill-conceived and botched military adventurism. Our economy is being stripped of its assets, given away piecemeal to wealthy insiders. In the place of past wealth, we are being shackled with unbearable debts for the purpose of binding us into servitude for generations to come. Our democracy and its hallowed Constitutional system of checks and balances are being dismantled before our eyes. The nation is dying.

The sad, apocalyptic truth is that the Democratic leadership has given up on America. Rather than reject the idea of empire, they embrace it. They might disdain inept execution by arrogant neo-cons but they do not begin to renounce the essential enterprise itself. They prattle on – Hillary-like – about how to do it better, more efficiently. They have resigned themselves and the country that we cannot compete in the world on the basis of hard work, discipline, industry, and ingenuity – the traditional paths to respect in the world, whether by persons or by nations. Instead, we are left to make our way in the world by raping, by plunder, by stealing the wealth of nations and people that are weaker than we are, not because it is right, not because there is any dignity or justice in it, but because we can.

The Democratic leadership has sold itself to the highest corporate and military bidders, offering its furtive political support to facilitate the looting of any assets, American or otherwise, that can be had for the taking. It is Democrats who make possible the retailing of “globalization” which is nothing so much as a blank check for corporate capital to arbitrage one country against another in its relentless pursuit of the cheapest labor and the weakest environmental laws. It was the Democrats who championed and pushed through NAFTA and the WTO.

Where that leaves us:

BUDDHA told this parable: A traveler, fleeing a tiger who was
chasing him, ran till he came to the edge of a cliff. There he
caught hold of a thick vine, and swung himself over the edge.

Above him the tiger snarled. Below him he heard another snarl, and
behold, there was another tiger, peering up at him. The vine
suspended him midway between two tigers.

Two mice, a white mouse and a black mouse, began to gnaw at the
vine. He could see they were quickly eating it through. Then in
front of him on the cliffside he saw a luscious bunch of grapes.
Holding onto the vine with one hand, he reached and picked a grape
with the other.

How delicious!

I spent the weekend looking away, trying to savor some of the “grapes” that I enjoy. However, things look so bad, the prospects so poor, the fanaticism of the winger religious zealots and racist nativists so frightening, that even the little pleasures seem to turn sour, and the thought crosses my mind that I wish the damned mice would finish up already.