Americans in their millions will still vote for Bush, and he may win in November. Even a win by Kerry will not change things too much in the grand scheme of things domestically; he will be painted, and taunted as a liberal (a near-fatal appellation in the dominant interpretation of American political lexicography ), but America (albeit not uniquely) is, to paraphrase Gore Vidal, a two-winged one-party state.
The eternal myth about American, (and by extension, Western) society is that anybody can become anything. Yes, some individuals from any sector of society can and do get to be anything (and that�s just as well, as life would have been a lot less fun had we never got to see Gerald Ford fall out of an aeroplane), but the plain fact of the matter is that there is no mythical equal economic playing field from which people from all of society�s divided strands can move about. As I have now firmly established that I am not writing this piece in reply to a serious academic paper, I don�t feel the need to quote from one of the great savants of our time, but will instead opt for Mr Michael Moore (once again)
The Declaration of the Corporate States of America
�We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women and their underaged children are created equally to serve the Corporation, to provide its labour without question, to accept whatever remuneration without complaint, and to consume its products without thought. In turn the Corporation will provide for the common good, secure the defense of the nation, and receive the bulk of the taxes paid by the people��
(from Dude, Where�s My Country p138)
Is it so unreasonable to assert that economic immobility in large sectors of the population, combined with the ever more pervasive power of Corporate America is and will have a far more damaging effect on American Society as a whole than some 40 % of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase, (assuming that this figure could even be satisfactorily quantified and/or justified).
And finally, just for a little political balance, let us refer to PJ O�Rourke for an example of governmental dependency, shall we? Writing in 1991, in Parliament of Whores, on American Agricultural Policy:
�Moscow on the Mississippi is an apt phrase. US farm policy is coercive, collectivist, and centrally planned and has been since 1929 when that wild radical Herbert Hoover created the Federal Farm Board in an attempt to corner the commodities market and control farm prices.
The New Deal successor to the Federal Farm Board was the Commodity Credit Corporation, or CCC, one of the Roosevelt era�s Goldilocks programs, so called because it barged in on the taxpayer fifty years ago, and it�s still there. The CCC is empowered by its 1933 charter to ��.undertake activities for the purpose of increasing production, stabilizing prices, and insuring adequate supplies; and to facilitate the efficient distribution of agricultural commodities.� A more Brehznevian set of instructions to a government agency is hard to imagine.
US farm policy is, along with North Korea and the Stanford Liberal arts faculty, one of the world�s last outposts of anti-free-market dogmatism.�
I think you catch his drift�.and just don�t get me started on the military-industrial complex and the National Security State.
I think that�s my lot for now .
Your great big lovable, muesli-knitting, liberal, tree-hugging,
Mike
* On re-reading these headlines they don�t seem too distant from the ones currently displayed.
** I�m sorry but I had to mention Khruschev. I kept writing the essay after essay about him at university, so I felt I had to name-check him at least once.
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