I was on a flight from Sacramento yesterday, and one of the passengers waiting to board (this was Southwest) was wearing a "NoBama '08" T-shirt. He was a short, pudgy, buzz-cut, angry white college kid. He was also eager to pick verbal fights with people around him, including the old lady in the wheelchair who chided him "you don't wear that shirt if you don't want a reaction from people." He said things like "oh yeah, we'll get him out of there. Americans can only take so much socialism." And other talking points. The reactions of the onlookers varied from bemusement to shaking heads and knowing glances to one another. I got the impression his parents would have been embarrassed. The "socialism" comment got laughs from the onlookers. Now, this was a typical business/commuter flight where the average flyer is more affluent than the population at large. I suspect that my reaction was like that of most of the people around me. THIS is what the Republican party has come in California? The contrast between this angry dumpy kid to the enthusiasm of Obama's young volunteers is striking. This kid seemed pretty typical of the Teabaggers we saw on TV two weeks ago.
NoBama. No no no no. Given the bizarre "socialism" comments we keep hearing, it's not even clear what the Republican base is saying "no" to. Sort of like a baby crying when it doesn't want to go to sleep.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
NoBama
Posted by The Law Talking Guy at 8:05 AM
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4 comments:
It is very ironic that they call Obama a socialist...the hypocrisy of the statement bowls me over. Since Reagan began the heavy deregulatory movement, at the end of his second term, there were 17% fewer companies on the stock exchange. There were 83 media companies in 1982, now there are 4, speaking about mass broadcast media here. Deregulation kills business, radio is dead, the music industry is dead, Nixon sold our electronics business to Asia, killing more American business. It just kills me that they say they are the real Americans and they do everything they can to destroy American business. More and more money going to fewer people in control...just like Mexico, the oligopoly country...one food company, one oil company, one concrete company, one phone company...we are not to far from that. The system the republicans like is generously, communism and to the extreme, totalitarian...but they call Obama a socialist? Drives me nuts...they are like 6 year old kids, they can only parrot a word they hear, they do not think...very scary people in my opinion...like Michelle Bachman...what the hell is she doing passing legislation in this country?
The best term to use to describe the dominant ideology in the Republican party is neither socialism nor capitalism Rather it is corporatism. Corporatism is the economic structure favored by Fascists in Western Europe (like Hitler, Franco, Petain, or Mussolini) and Latin American populist dictatorships (from Juan Peron to - early in his career - Augusto Pinochet).
Corporatist political economy is based on state domination and favoritism towards state sanctioned companies, unions and other social organizations. It's not a free market approach, the state intervenes to protect it's favored companies etc. And it's not socialism, the state does not control the means of production. It is heavily state driven but still based primarily on private ownership of property and the profit motive. However, unlike capitalism, it does not rely on competition or other market forces to reach production equilibriums. It is also very prone to abuses of power and corruption. This is exactly the pattern we see in "Bush's America."
The other day I saw a short, pudby, buzz-cut, angry black college kid. He had on a t-shirt with Obama 08 on it, and I stood up and cheered and the rest of the airplane joined. We promised to vote for Obama in 2012 and this seemed to please him. I hope so, because I am still feeling guilty for being white.
McCain/Palin 2012!!!!!!!!!!
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