Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Is there a bigger scumbag than Tom Delay?

roachboy · 04-05-2005, 08:07 AM

is there a bigger scumbag than tom delay?
as a faithful lackey of the corporate interests that prop up the reality of conservative politics, in the interests of which the right operates, tom delay is but a symptom.

this is yet another example of conservativism in its present guise as a self-disempowerment program dressed up rhetorically as its opposite.

it is yet another example of how important the workers' movement was for making capitalism a less barbaric system--regardless of the problems that later ensued.
this is an index of what the collapse of that workers movement means.
for 150 years, it was obvious that market "logic" and human life are not related except insofar as these converge in the persons of the holders of capital.
for them, however, it appears that the people who actually enable production to occur at all--the workers--are expendable. the right chooses not to remember this basic fact. the right would like to erase everything that has happened over the past century that enabled american-style capitalism to be functional. erase the history of capitalism, replace it with hallucinations of the "free market". erase the history of dissent, the function of dissent, replace it with a paranoiac moralizing discourse that operates to exclude dissent in all areas as evil. erase rational discourse altogether. replace all of it with a short-sighted, self-serving and suicidal ideolgy already demonstrated to be incapable of structuring rational action in the capitalist context by 1848. replace it with an ideology that would set up the american system as self-defeating even on the terms run out by makret theorists like hayek through the elimination of feedback loops.

welcome to the brave new early nineteenth century capitalism the right wants to inflict on us--behind the smoke screens of far-right christian ideology, behind the smoke screen of reactionary "wedge issues" articulated on "cultural" grounds--what the right seems to have in mind for the rest of us is the creation of new "industrial reserve armies" to fill low-wage, low-skill jobs in which any and all workers are completely interchangeable---in which working people will have little reality for the holders of capital beyond being a variable in overall calculations of profit and loss, as agents whose primary function is to introduce irrationalities into the perfection of organizational diagrams.....appendages of machines....crushed by debt peonage as a function of the struggle to survive....less than serfs...less than human beings.

welcome to the new barbarism--constant downward pressure on wages, elimination of benefits packages, the withdrawal of social security from the poor, opposition to access to basic health care for everyone regardless of income--welcome to the destruction of the state as mechanism for making political the consequences of cowboy capitalism--welcome to a world dominated at the level of reactionary fantasy by a moralizing, individualistic ideology the primary function of which is to place obastacles at the deepest possible level before any attempt to organize and on the basis of organizing to force--and i mean force--the holders of capital to see what for 150 years--thanks in significant measure to the actions of the left--has been obvious--that capitalism sits within a bigger social system that enables the holders of capital to extract profit and that therefore the holders of capital owe it--OWE IT--to contribute to the health of that system.

welcome to the type of capitalism that made revolution inevitable---with a twist--the hatred of those who oppose conservative dreams of hegemony, rehearsed through the kind of racist staging of the Enemy you saw during bushterm 1 directed at muslims, that you saw around election time directed at gay people, that you see surfacing in truly frightening form through the acccelerated integration of far-right protestant evangelical ideology, which enables those who oppose the right to be understood as minions of satan--welcome to an ideological climate that makes fascism seem preferable to trade unions. welcome to an ideological climate that acts as though an authoritarian system that talks alot about democracy is in fact a democracy.

are there bigger scumbags than tom delay?
sure
tom delay is but a symptom.

04-05-2005, 08:07 AM	#34 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	is there a bigger scumbag than tom delay? as a faithful lackey of the corporate interests that prop up the reality of conservative politics, in the interests of which the right operates, tom delay is but a symptom. this is yet another example of conservativism in its present guise as a self-disempowerment program dressed up rhetorically as its opposite. it is yet another example of how important the workers' movement was for making capitalism a less barbaric system--regardless of the problems that later ensued. this is an index of what the collapse of that workers movement means. for 150 years, it was obvious that market "logic" and human life are not related except insofar as these converge in the persons of the holders of capital. for them, however, it appears that the people who actually enable production to occur at all--the workers--are expendable. the right chooses not to remember this basic fact. the right would like to erase everything that has happened over the past century that enabled american-style capitalism to be functional. erase the history of capitalism, replace it with hallucinations of the "free market". erase the history of dissent, the function of dissent, replace it with a paranoiac moralizing discourse that operates to exclude dissent in all areas as evil. erase rational discourse altogether. replace all of it with a short-sighted, self-serving and suicidal ideolgy already demonstrated to be incapable of structuring rational action in the capitalist context by 1848. replace it with an ideology that would set up the american system as self-defeating even on the terms run out by makret theorists like hayek through the elimination of feedback loops. welcome to the brave new early nineteenth century capitalism the right wants to inflict on us--behind the smoke screens of far-right christian ideology, behind the smoke screen of reactionary "wedge issues" articulated on "cultural" grounds--what the right seems to have in mind for the rest of us is the creation of new "industrial reserve armies" to fill low-wage, low-skill jobs in which any and all workers are completely interchangeable---in which working people will have little reality for the holders of capital beyond being a variable in overall calculations of profit and loss, as agents whose primary function is to introduce irrationalities into the perfection of organizational diagrams.....appendages of machines....crushed by debt peonage as a function of the struggle to survive....less than serfs...less than human beings. welcome to the new barbarism--constant downward pressure on wages, elimination of benefits packages, the withdrawal of social security from the poor, opposition to access to basic health care for everyone regardless of income--welcome to the destruction of the state as mechanism for making political the consequences of cowboy capitalism--welcome to a world dominated at the level of reactionary fantasy by a moralizing, individualistic ideology the primary function of which is to place obastacles at the deepest possible level before any attempt to organize and on the basis of organizing to force--and i mean force--the holders of capital to see what for 150 years--thanks in significant measure to the actions of the left--has been obvious--that capitalism sits within a bigger social system that enables the holders of capital to extract profit and that therefore the holders of capital owe it--OWE IT--to contribute to the health of that system. welcome to the type of capitalism that made revolution inevitable---with a twist--the hatred of those who oppose conservative dreams of hegemony, rehearsed through the kind of racist staging of the Enemy you saw during bushterm 1 directed at muslims, that you saw around election time directed at gay people, that you see surfacing in truly frightening form through the acccelerated integration of far-right protestant evangelical ideology, which enables those who oppose the right to be understood as minions of satan--welcome to an ideological climate that makes fascism seem preferable to trade unions. welcome to an ideological climate that acts as though an authoritarian system that talks alot about democracy is in fact a democracy. are there bigger scumbags than tom delay? sure tom delay is but a symptom. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite