"Real" Democrats versus New Democrats. Part One of Two
Ah, those "real" Democrats in Washington, D.C.!1 Amirite?
After learning about the Democratic Leadership Council, I began seeing the Democratic Party as a party that had once striven to benefit the 100%, but that the DLC and the Clintons had transformed into something different. Although this doesn't exactly capture it, think Trojan horse, meets the Pizza That Ate Chicago, meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers, meets your basic cult, meets Herbert H. Hoover, J. Edgar Hoover, Leghorn Foghorn (who also had an accomplice named Bill) and Scrooge McDuck. Then, my view of D.C. Democrats underwent a second, and more fundamental paradigm shift because I had been thinking about things like:
1. The Robber Barons, who amassed dynastic wealth from the 1860s to the 1920s (including Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan and one Samuel Prescott Bush ("Robber Barons" says it all.)
2. The Russian Revolutions, which began in 1905, with the Russian people persisting until the Revolutions of 1917
3. The "slaughter" of Tsar Nicholas, his family and their doctor and remaining servants.
4. The rapid initial growth of the Communist Party in the USA, which began in 1919.
5. The Wall Street grifters who defrauded hard-working, low income Americans by selling them "pie in the sky" stocks and other securities,1 while they were recovering from World War I and the flu pandemic that the war had brought from Europe to the U.S.
6. One bank panic after another following Black Friday, 1929.
The nation had seen nothing remotely like the New Deal before and the conventional wisdom since 1789 had been that the Constitution simply did not give the federal government powers of the kind that the New Deal required. (Hence, the so-called "Court-packing plan.") Nonetheless, the New Deal was invented, drafted and passed with gobsmacking speed.
The Russian Revolutions and the slaughter of the Tsar and his family, combined with the stark contrast between the haves and have nots, had to have scared the wealthy of the world. When the U.S. stock market crashed after wealthy Americans had defrauded so many, wealthy Americans had to have been even more terrified, including the Roosevelts and the Kennedys. And Americans were taking unified action, unrest, including the 43,000 marchers of the Bonus Army.
Presidential patriarch, Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Sr., has been quoted as having said something like "I would gladly give half of all I have in order to be able to keep the other half in peace." Even if that story is apocryphal, thoughts of that kind had to have been going through the mind of any sentient rich person in the U.S., especially those, who, like Kennedy, Sr., had been among the defrauders.
Fear that Americans would emulate the Russians and rise up against the wealthy of our own country was, I think, a good part of the motivation for the New Deal. The rest was trying to make sure that Wall Street and banks would recover from a well-deserved lack of consumer confidence. But for those two things, I don't think even a mostly Democratic Congress would have passed the New Deal. (The prospect of getting votes on the taxpayers' dime probably didn't hurt.)
"Real" Democrats versus New Democrats. Part Two of Two (including the War on Poverty) https://caucus99percent.com/content/real-democrats-versus-new-democrats-...
Comments
I agree with you. But, for what it's worth--
I would actually be OK with making that deal with Joe Kennedy Sr, who was a bastard, if I could be sure that he would keep his word.
The problem is, even if he, and his descendants, are willing to keep that bargain, obviously most of the other members of his class are not.
Once they assembled a large enough military force with devastating enough weapons, including weapons of mass destruction, all they needed was the technology to do constant surveillance on everyone. Presto! The end of populist revolution, at least in the "developed" countries.
Once they knew that was coming, they no longer had to make, or keep, any deals.
Turns out the Marxists and anarchists back then were right. Bummer.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Hi. I agree with you, too! But you should wait for Part Two
before deciding if you really do agree with me.
As for Joe de Joe: If he did say that, I'm guessing it was in the context of persuading his fellow rich people to go along with the New Deal, explaining why their paying few extra bucks a year in taxes would be more than worth it to them. Otherwise, the American peasants would start helping themselves to all of it.
In any event, Joe certainly did not follow up on it with a contribution to the US Treasury, which is very much allowed. So, it he had the government to keep the hoi polloi at bay at public expense, he would just as soon hang on to his entire fortune. AFAIK, Buffet and the other guys who were claiming publicly circa 2008 that they wanted to pay more taxes never made a contribution, either.
When I pointed that out at the time on another board, some bot posted asking me how much I'd contributed. Major false equivalency, though. I never went around telling media--or anyone--I wanted to pay more taxes. If I had said that and meant it, I would simply have contributed to the Treasury--as those guys would have if they meant what they were saying.
ETA: DANG! Every time I look at something I've posted, I see another typo or another thing I want to change. I wish I could type blindfolded so I wouldn't keep seeing that stuff, but I can barely type as it is.