Political Debate Comes Down to Power

Our public dialogue is about politics and politics is about power. Power, political or otherwise, is "possession of control, authority or influence over others." Politics is not about faith, family or freedom. It is not about social conscience or economic fairness. It is what the Tea Party, Occupy and most Americans are complaining about when others buy control over them.

Our political quarrels, all of our scrapping and hassling is so much noise that is designed to conceal the exercise of power. Those who control us are able to hide behind multilevel screens of deliberate secrecy. They buy power but they do so behind laws that permit them to remain anonymous. In the end, the ultimate political contest is always between people and money.

At the first level of concealment, political power is disguised as a legal question. We are directed to the Supreme Court whose decisions cite the language of the U.S. Constitution and precedents. That is a legalistic screen. Talk of "original intent" or what the drafters really meant is again noise designed to obscure who is doing the controlling.

The the Supreme Court justices, and lower courts, are actually tasked to find an interpretation that supports their party's desired political conclusion. That's their job. Nominees are confirmed on the basis of their politics. They just lie during confirmation hearings and everyone knows it. Robert Bork in September 1987 was the last nominee to tell the truth. Bork is not on the Supreme Court; Clarence Thomas is.

The Court is a thoroughly political body. Judicial activism is the name of the game. George W. Bush was elected president by a Supreme Court where all members abandoned their legal philosophy to vote their political preferences. The Court reinterpreted the Second Amendment to exclude the militia language because the gun lobby had the money to buy power. Gay marriage and medical marijuana are in the process of a startlingly, rapid acceptance because a younger generation has no time for the bigotry and hypocrisy of its parents. The shift proves people power can work but it also shows the court can read political winds and is cleaning its docket to preserve Republican power while it can.

A second level of cover-up forces all issues into the framework of federal/state conflict. The Confederacy tried to defend slavery behind a mask of states' rights. The Dixiecrat's tried that again in 1948 and then again in the 1960s to defend segregation. It's not just Dixie. New England talked about states rights and secession during the War of 1812 because they didn't like the way the federal government was exercising its taxing power. The supporters of the Defense of Marriage Act and the opponents of medical marijuana are talking nullification of federal laws.

A lot of politics also gets disguised as religion. The Great Awakenings, starting in the 1740s, had profound political consequences as a precursor of the Revolutionary War. Religious support for abolition, temperance and women's rights are central to understanding the Civil War. The rise of conservative denominations in the late 1960s and 70s has been likened to a religious awakening. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are proudly political.

What it boils down to is that popular sovereignty, the will of the people, democracy or whatever you call our public dispute settlement mechanism, puts us in a constant political squabble, defending our right not to be controlled. That's what politics is: the people versus the power of wealth. Old rich elites try to use the wealth they have creamed from society to control the young and ambitious. The political gridlock that we complain of is actually a stalled generational transfer of power.

In this context, Presidents Bush and Obama are transitional, not transformational, presidents. They both tried to respond to the more populist traits of the people but they ended up serving their money masters.

President Bush really believed, for instance, in compassionate conservatism, but he was serving money when he tried to privatize Social Security. Similarly, President Obama has not prosecuted a single banker for their part in the destruction of the economy.

America faced this situation before. When wealthy plantation owners rejected the national consensus on slavery, the conflict was not legal, regional or religious. It was open warfare. But, at its heart, our Civil War was the wealthy maintaining its position against the will of the people. That's where we are now.

The middle-class, the people, are in a sorry state and no one cares. This last weekend the Bureau of Labor Statistics published the fact that in 2012 the average wage fell again, making it a 14 percent drop since 1972. No newspaper, magazine, television or radio station reported that fact. Our political dialogue is a failure when wages fall for 40 years and the middle-class is unable to provide for the education of its children or the old age of its seniors.

Since the 1970s, the welfare of the people has been completely controlled by the wealthy.