On shaping history

So I'm bouncing around this morning reading here and there. Robert Reich piece is worthwhile. Robert Reich sees the future: America’s two-party system is finished. It a fictionalized view of the year 2020, rather tongue in cheek:

Politics abhors a vacuum. In 2019, the People’s Party filled it.

Its platform called for getting big money out of politics, ending “crony capitalism,” abolishing corporate welfare, stopping the revolving door between government and the private sector, and busting up the big Wall Street banks and corporate monopolies.

The People’s Party also pledged to revoke the Trans Pacific Partnership, hike taxes on the rich to pay for a wage subsidy (a vastly expanded Earned Income Tax Credit) for everyone earning below the median, and raise taxes on corporations that outsource jobs abroad or pay their executives more than 100 times the pay of typical Americans.

Americans rallied to the cause. Millions who called themselves conservatives and Tea Partiers joined with millions who called themselves liberals and progressives against a political establishment that had shown itself incapable of hearing what they had been demanding for years.

The rest, as they say, is history.

So that got me thinking (I spilled out a mini rant somewhere in a comment) about my Kid and all the kids and what the future holds for them and how they are and will deal with all that.

I know the kinds of conversations I have with my daughter, and occasionally a few of her friends. Most are in their first year of college and staring down future debt with dread.

Oh here's my rambley mini-rant from the reddit space, upon reading the Reich piece:

I keep thinking about my daughter who is in her first year of college locally and living in our garage apt. About as low budget as you can get (except community college I guess) and she's still going into debt for it. Many of her friends-mates are living at home too. Anyway, so she was age 11 back in 2008 when Candidate Obama was making promises to restore the Rule of Law, fix the economy, go after the banksters (wait whut? okay strike that one), save the country and so on.

Eleven. Nineteen now. In 2020 she will be 23 then 2024... 27. And the next wave thats right behind her will be voting age by 2020 and 2024 for sure.

Lemme tell you somethin'. These kids are NOT gonna put up with this shit! They are 99hundred % with zero tolerance for anti-equality bullshit wrt LGBT especially (have you head them talk about gender and orientation stuff? egads, lol) NO tolerance for racism wars and all the other ~ism's TPTB use to divide us.

They also (as others have said) as digital natives, they have fine tuned bullshit detectors and no tolerance for lyin' ass lies and the liars who spread them.

/rant

Yeah well I'm not done with that rant and probably never will be.

So, next I stumbled on to this post, kinda long, but it sure rings some bells. (Note, I looked at his bio there and yes he's a 20-something):

"Why I’m Leaving the Democratic Party After the primaries, I’m out."

The Democratic party has done everything in its power to alienate me—and, I suspect, my generational peers of similar political proclivities.

Also, an aside, Ive discovered, my daughter, while I think of her as a Millennial, is probably more this "Gen Z"... not sure if they've decided yet what to call it. This piece has it as "Gen Z" or "Gen Edge" and its in the Style section, LA Times. So heres a link for more on that, more with the marketing people's view (since they are the ones who watch this sort of thing as it unfolds). This Gen is not only for LGBT equal rights, they are actually pretty enlightened and do not see gender or orientation issues as black and white. At all. And they are fierce about this. This uber-tolerance extends to faux judgements in general.

I don't know how this is all gonna shake down, this election season, this movement, this era. It's hard sometimes to evaluate something right when you know you are in the very thick of it, but in the thick of it we are, my friends. And it's big. YUGE even.

"The People's Party". I like the sound of that.

Seeds. Nurture them.

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pfiore8's picture

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“There are moments which are not calculable, and cannot be assessed in words; they live on in the solution of memory… ”
― Lawrence Durrell, "Justine"

ppnortney's picture

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The smaller the mind the greater the conceit. --Aesop

Ray Pensador's picture

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www.RayPensador.com
When you boil it all down, the number one step you can take to get out from under the fascist boot of the oligarchy is to stop subjecting yourself to the the U.S. corporate news media. It is a powerful psyops weapon.

It's not exactly the same of course. No draft. But the kids are out and in the streets again. That's when change happens.
Where's the Dem convention this year? Bet there'll be a lot of the kids there.
Wouldn't it be great if as many of us older folks showed up as the kids that show up?
Book your travel plans, be a kid again for a few days!
We all have a stake in this fight. Don't let the kids stand alone.
One more time!

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With their hearts they turned to each others heart for refuge
In troubled years that came before the deluge
*Jackson Browne, 1974, Before the Deluge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SX-HFcSIoU

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'Well, I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years, Doctor, and I’m happy to state I finally won out over it." Elwood P. Dowd "

NWIA's picture

For many of us Xers, this was either a one time return to the D party or a last chance. Depending on what happens the rest of the way, our kids, whether college aged or much younger, are going to understand that the word "party" means an exclusive affair to which we mortals have no invitation, unless we are the damn help.

If nothing else, at least now the two parties will have to be genuinely scared of independents. We could be RWNJ's, we could be baffled by the virtually imperceptible differences between the Big Two, or we could be the Virtuous Leftwingers. They'll never know, and their fear, the stuff that is killing Hillary right now, will push them into their graves.

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Haikukitty's picture

As a gen-xer myself, this is the year I become unaffiliated. Obama-hope kept me in a while longer, and then of course getting to vote for Bernie is keeping me in, but I'll be going independent after this. I'm so done with the DNC.

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NWIA's picture

Of Reich's essay is that he sets up the GE as a battle between Ryan and Clinton, without declaring a winner. Writing of the outcome of the election, he illustrates so well how it simply DOES NOT MATTER.

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Lenzabi's picture

may well look back and see this as the time we gained new political parties, ones that reflect the people, and not some billionaire or corporate overlords pretending to help us all. but actual ready to see what the people want and implement such programs, and help us all not just a few.

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So long, and thanks for all the fish

Excellent post. This is the same feedback I get from my kids and their friends. My only concern is that I think they're too heavily influenced by celebs. But then again, so are most people in this country. But we can already see Obama making heavy use of celebrities and CIA more and more active in Hollywood. I think what really took the cake was House of Cards, when that was hijacked for propaganda purposes with their ridiculous insertion of Putin and Russia into the plot. Samantha Power kind of bragged about that later in a fluffly NYT article about herself, I think it was.

I do think a 3rd party should rise up. I really hope it does. People's Party would be a bad choice of names because it would be red baited to death. But otherwise, a populist party pulling from left, right and independent could sweep the country. I've thought this for a long time, mind you

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