Saturday, October 9, 2010

Just Wondering

(Sorry about no posting for the past couple of days.  Folks have been sick at work and I have had to step up from my usual lethargy and sloth)

So, lets for a moment talk about Millard Fillmore.   Compromise of 1850 was his baby along with sending Commodore Perry to Japan with a fleet of gunships to tell those Japanese that they did have to trade with us (they really didn't want to...globalization at gunpoint?) .   Guy was a Whig, served in the White House from 1950 to 1953.

The odd thing is, the Whig party vanished in 1956 (or so).  Fillmore's party self-destructed within three years after being in the White House and in control of Congress.  That is something to consider.

Most of this was a setup for the civil war.  No, not that the creation of the Republican party was a conscious effort to bring on the war, or that the war was inevitable at that point.  It was just that the state of the country's political debate and the polarization of the country needed a new party to continue.

So good old Millard saw the birth of the new party (the GOP) and the death of the party that gave him power.  All of this was done while he had fresh memories of the White House food.  Both of the paries have had their turns in the White House lately, both parties are increasingly out of touch with the country.

The point of this history refresher is that during times of stress, the political system of our country and our people is capable of dealing with the problems.  The parties that we have known and see as near-permanent are not branches of government, they can be changed.

Just remember that the changes might not be in your best interests.  I watch the Tea party with avid interest.  Having been to a few get-togethers, these folks are mostly pasty-faced white folk who can't seem to get it through their head that the world has moved past them.  They are heavily (my estimate is 3/4) weighted to the racist and for the most part educated in a manner that obviously did not cherish freedom of thought as a virtue.

The nature of the Democratic party is equally repugnant.   They are disorganized and, at best, venal.

The nature of the remaining Republicans is that of a slut puppy for corporations.

I am not positing that one of the parties will die soon.  I do want you to think about what a party should be.  And what the political system usually ends up being.



The New York Times has written in explaining why the political parties have lost the confidence of the public: "Their machinery of intrigue, their shuffling evasions, the dodges, the chicanery and the deception of their leaders have excited universal disgust, and have created a general readiness in the public mind for any new organization that shall promise to shun their vices."
The New York Evening Post, in explaining the same condition has written that the people "saw parties without any difference contending for power, for the sake of power. They saw politics made a profession, and public plunder an employment. ... They beheld our public works the plaything of a rotten dynasty, enriching gamblers, and purchasing power at our expense."
The dates of those articles were November and December 1855 (See The Origins of the Republican Part by William E. Gienapp, Oxford University Press, 1987).
The idea for this article and the quote came from a pretty good read over at the Huffington...

4 comments:

Mayberry said...

That tea party "racist" stuff is bullshit. Stop listening to the MSM dumbasses that keep spewing that bile. I saw no such thing at the local rally; as a matter of fact, the organizer was a black man. That being said, the GOP is hijacking the tea party, and the MSM is doing their best to smear them. Yes, the tea party is comprised of sheep, but disgruntled sheep. They are slowly waking, though it seems they will wake too late. Regardless, that "racist" bullshit is more of the divide and conquer establishment socialist strategy.

Degringolade said...

Mayberry:

I have to respectfully disagree. The meeting that I have gone to, the folks that I spoke to, the tenor of the meetings were utterly racist. Maybe this is a function of the area I live in. But the Pacific NW is pretty open.

The meetings I went to disgusted me. there was so much underlying hate there that it was palpable.

Maybe it is different in your neck of the clear cut. But the meeting and rallies up this way are reeking of racism.

That is the main reason I stopped going.

That and the big-money elites have been doing a bang up job of taking the TP over for their own purposes.

russell1200 said...

RACISM: A belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.

I don't think that the Tea Party is racist. I think they are often self absorbed snobs. I think some of their snobbishness does come out as racist because

a) the word has taken such a broad meaning.

b) some of the groups they dislike have are defined on a racially, but their dislike of the group is not race based.

It is a fine distinction, but an important one.

To take a less inflammatory subject. They aren't anti-education because the hate the (all liberal in their mind) college professors, and they don't hate college professor per se. They hate them because as a group, the college professors work at counter purpose to what they want.

To the extent that they don't like African Americans, it is not because they are African American. It is because they are (at least a majority) Democrats.

They attack minorities who are viewed as Democrats, and the Democratic leaning minority groups attack them for being Republican.

You don't see much cross friction after all between the Cuban-Americans and the Tea Party after all.

russell1200 said...

Sorry, one minor point. You have the Whig Party collapsing in 1956, and comment them being in the White House from 1950 to 1953. I am sure you mean 1850 to 1853, and 1856.