Evidence the Country Has Not Moved Right

The media are proclaiming the Republican victory on November 2 as a triumph for the Tea Party. But the public's views don't reflect the Tea Party's right-wing positions.

The thrust of America's right-leaning media coverage has lost steam recently. But the narrative that America turned to the right last fall is still operative and dominant. As the article referenced here shows, America did not so much turn right as reject the lack of action on the economic front by the Democrats. The Democratic Party, though certainly better than the Republican Party, is essentially tied to the profit system. This is true in both theory and practicalities. Big donors have still been financing the party conventions and contributing in other ways to various political entities. The weight of money has tragically tipped the scales in America resulting in large-scale poverty. Real income has been declining. And, shockingly, a study of recent health data shows that in large swaths of the American geography, life expectancy is actually declining. (See The Washington Post for the week of June 12.)

Conditions in which the so-called compassionate Party (Democratic) cannot or will not act to significantly improve the lives of people -- as FDR did -- can often give rise to far-right movements. That is what happened in 2010 just as the most thoughtful and acute observers had predicted.

We are left, then, with a decision about what kind of country we should have and specifically, who should own America. Events are sorting this out for us, but in such a painful fashion. Tough logic could be put into service to make the process much shorter and much less painful. While this blog may not be the height of logical process, it does seek to provide solid information to contribute to such a process. May the article linked here be part of such an effort.



http://socialistworker.org/2010/11/08/did-america-turn-right