The recent budget proposal from right wing budget guru Rep. Paul Ryan reveals several sordid truths about conservative strategy. We would do well to understand what these rascals are really up to with their demand for draconian cuts to the social safety net.

First, in delivering such a drastic and extreme budget proposal the right is simply doing what many have done before them. They have offered policy that is so outrageous and absurd that virtually anything less severe will be greeted as “moderate” and “reasonable. In doing this they push the debate continuum further and further to the right, as policy once considered harsh is now looked at as a potential compromise.

In political parlance this is called pushing the Overton Window. The Overton Window is the range of policy that is considered acceptable. By introducing radical policy proposals to the discussion one attempts to move the window to include ideas once considered unacceptable to the mainstream of public debate, by making them look less objectionable in comparison. It is a tactic used by everyone in the political game, primarily because it works. By advocating, for example, the eventual privatization of Medicare, Ryan hopes to make future policy advocacy of a slightly less undesirable nature more appealing to the masses. Time will only tell if the trick works.

Second, inside Ryan’s proposal we find revealed the true strategic aims of the right. Conservatives have been trying to repeal the New Deal for over 70 years. They hope to take advantage of the current weak economy and the resultant loss in federal revenues to emasculate reviled New Deal and Great Society social programs, all in the name of fiscal responsibility.

The rich and their pet programs will not suffer from Ryan’s budgetary slashing. In their plan only the poor and middle class will bear the burden of allegedly putting our country’s financial house in order. Make no mistake, the corporate elite and their followers aim to make America a government of the wealthy, by the wealthy and for the wealthy. If the Overton Window continues to get pushed further and further to the right eventually the corporations and their fat cat followers will have a stranglehold on our nation that average citizens will be unable to overcome.

Can you say Banana Republic?

Somewhere along the line, perhaps because of relentless promotion by free marketeers, America has adopted the notion that our democracy must have a free market economy. Capitalism seemingly was advocated by no less than the Founding Fathers as the only possible economic system possible for our nation, if these people are to be believed. The bare fact is that numerous democracies operate quite well indeed using socialist economic principles. I do not say this as a die hard advocate for socialism but to point out that democracy and capitalism are not joined at the hip as some would have us believe.

Another hard fact is that many of our nations most precious institutions are based in socialist economic principles. These institutions thrive because the goods or services they offer have been shown to work best with the government running the show. The postal service, police and fire departments, social security and many other entities do best with government management.

This is not to say that we should eschew Capitalism entirely. Capitalism’s benefits are many, entrepreneurial spirit, innovation, and the drive to raise our selves from poverty to wealth have served this country well over the years. The problem lies in the dark underbelly of capitalism as practiced by unscrupulous manipulators. Left unchecked capitalists seek only that which will benefit them, to the detriment of anybody else. A runaway capitalist influenced government could easily lead to the downfall of democracy as we appreciate it in this great land.

If capitalist and the politicians they control continue to ride roughshod over the democratic principles we cherish, without the protections afforded the people by government regulation with teeth, we could soon live in a country very unfamiliar to those who fought to create us. They have the money but we have the power if we choose to unite and use it.

This is why a large part of the tactical operations of the corporate overlords is involved with keeping us at each others throats. The Tea Party activists are kept in the dark about just how much in common they have with the progressives they revile by nimble manipulation of hot button emotional issues propagated by the right wing echo chamber.

The battles for the heart and soul of America rage. We may lose some along the way but the fight must continue, as the war must be won if America is to have the future envisioned for it by those who founded us. A well regulated capitalist economy, with some socialist institutions where applicable, is a requisite goal of this struggle.

One of my guilty pleasures is to read the commentary on news and opinion items at my local newspapers online site. Let me first say that this dialogue is dominated by perhaps two dozen diehard enthusiasts who obviously have more time than they know what to do with. There are approximately an equal number of conservatives and liberals, ostensibly, who are among these chronic posters. One means of amusing myself while reading is counting the number of posts before the debate leaves the realm of the topic and becomes quite personal.

There seems to be an epidemic of ad hominem attacks at all levels of public discourse these days. Normal people with valid opinions are consistently called idiots, morons (or morans if you wish) or any number of epithets denoting some level of depravity. I have often wondered what is the source of all this vitriol. Do people truly need to demonize those with different opinions? Do they need to call people names simply to make them feel better about themselves or their own opinions?

I believe everyone wants to believe that their opinions are correct. There is nothing wrong with this. A large part of life is assessing situations and forming an opinion. Where this can all too easily go south is when we make the illogical assumption that those who disagree with us have some sort of mental or emotional deficit.

The media can take at least a modicum of the blame for this phenomenon. Modern media can emphasize the differences between us rather than the things we all have in common as humans and Americans. As citizens we must overcome this tendency to demonize our social and political opponents.

A lot depends on us developing meaningful and conscious dialogue to address our many problems

Over the last several days since the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords nearly everyone in the political journalistic realm has opined on the event. To over generalize, the right has concentrated on portraying the shooter as a crazy man and offering up false equivalencies about how deranged people exist on both ends of the political spectrum and there is vitriolic rhetoric that emanates from everywhere, not just the right. The left has mostly offered that we have a toxic political climate where cross hairs are placed on congressional districts on a website graphic and leaders such as US Senate candidates speak of Second Amendment remedies. They are certain this vitriol inevitably leads unstable people to do heinous things.

In other words, everyone is scrambling to convince us that they are not culpable, that their side is not responsible for this senseless act. The reality is that we are all somewhat responsible. We have all come to accept a level of hyperbole in public discourse that uses war analogies, terms of destruction and the language of mortal conflict to describe our day to day human conflicts. We speak of kill shots and taking out people and wiping out our enemies. This is especially true in sports analogies. We blitz, we take no prisoners, we attack a defense. We have become inured to the use of these terms of war in our everyday syntax. We have taken man’s proclivity for violence and made it an essential part of our daily lives by allowing the language of violence to flourish.

No one is blameless. Yes, the right wing has had more visible leaders give tacit or overt approval to the use of the terminology of death than the left, but the left has been as vociferous as anyone in demonizing those with which it disagrees. We all accept the use of the language of hate as normal.

One thing the media has not done these past few days is turn the microscope on itself. Who is it that has fed us a constant stream of hateful language in its day to day coverage of world events? In a desire to create as much controversy as possible to get as many paying viewers to make as much money as possible the media throws caution to the wind. The goal of media is no longer to inform clearly. Instead it is to entertain, to make money for the parent company. Using the language of hate is just one of many ways so called “news” outlets compete for the hearts and minds of the viewer and/or listener. Lawmakers do not disagree they “clash”.  The other party is not an opponent but an “enemy”.

Until we as a society reject the common use of the language of hate by our media and as it has seeped into our everyday usage we will, knowledgeably or unwittingly as the case may be, continue to create a climate of fear and loathing in public discourse. We need to learn how to disagree without using the language of war and hate. Words have consequences. It starts with you and me and what we allow as acceptable language for public discourse. Perhaps, when debating politics, fewer ad hominem attacks and more respect for those who disagree with us is a place where we can all start.

Sticks and stones still break bones but words CAN harm us.

It is said we get the government we deserve. I take this to mean that whatever expertise and mood is existent in the electorate is reflected in those they choose to govern, through whom they vote for in elections. If we are wise we get wisdom in government. If we are foolish we get fools.

It is early in the morning Nov 3rd, the day after the election fiasco for Democrats that was the 2010 midterm elections. Nationally Republicans took back the House in dramatic fashion and nearly took over the Senate as well. Numerous Republican governor candidates, taking advantage of Tea Party voters, won their states, leading up to redistricting in 2012. Here in Minnesota Republicans took over both houses of the state legislature for the first time in a generation. Unabashed progressives such as Alan Grayson and Russ Feingold were shown the door.

So what does all this mean. First it means more gridlock nationally, as a Republican House will butt heads with a Democratic Executive. Second it means lots of attempts, and plenty of success, at passing draconian cuts to social programs as Republican legislatures and governors rush to outdo each other in legislating “less government” and “fiscal sanity”.

How did this all come about. I believe there are two major reasons. First, swing voters are notoriously fickle, taking on a “what have you done for me lately” mentality. They “swing” back and forth between the parties hoping to find the beat deal of the moment, not realizing how slowly the gears of government can move. They gave the Democrats a whole two years to solve a problem that in many ways had been thirty years in the making. They didn’t get what they wanted immediately and made the Democrats suffer for their “failure”. Second, what we have seen is the first installment of corporatist government, bought and sold by big money by way of the Citizens United ruling. Corporations have been able to whip the electorate into a Tea Party frenzy by massively funding misleading and downright false ads about their progressive enemies as well as secretly funding the organizational efforts of said Tea Partiers.

It is this takeover by corporate interests which I find most troubling. Swing voters are likely to swing back again as they become disillusioned with the other side for not doing things fast enough, as is sure to happen. Corporations, however, will be able to continue to pour huge amounts of dollars into their efforts to dominate society, effectively drowning out their competition, at which they are so well experienced. Creeping Fascism will become more of a torrent. Soon we will be just another corporate oligarchy, another third world nation with a small elite class of undeniable wealth and a large docile underclass, pining for their own chance at the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

This is the eventuality which really scares me. If this were merely a case of a pendulum swing I would simply spit on my hands and start working to bring about the next shift in political fortunes. The realities of the firm establishment of corporate money as free speech are much more menacing. The true left wing in America, our progressive activists, and sympathetic politicians are in danger of extinction, run out of town on a rail by a population hoodwinked into accepting corporate interests as essential to the health of our democracy.

Capitalists are hell bent on establishing conspicuous consumption capitalism as a necessary function of the American democracy. They are succeeding. American democracy does not have to be dominated by cruel and heartless Capitalists. We can have a non socialist market moderated and regulated by the interests of the common good which is as or more successful than the return to the robber baron era envisioned by the Corporatists. But we, as a nation of free humans, will have to fight perhaps our most vital and important battle ever in our ongoing struggle to create a society bound by the principles of liberty which have so far guided us well. We will have to stand up and resist the machinations of the corporate interests. We will have to reestablish government of and by and for the people.

I pray we are up to the task.