Last month the world watched with concern and disgust as a group of white nationalist nihilists - otherwise known as the Tea Party - threatened to destroy the financial integrity of the United States if they didn't get their agenda through the US Congress. The bill that was passed was a disgrace; as Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, wrote in the New York Times the debt deal "“will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status.”
Picking up on the "banana republic" theme, Konrad Ege in Der Freitag sees that US policy is firmly in the hands of the "plantation owners" - millionaires like the members of the US Senate and billionaires like the Koch brothers:
Jenseits der Ringautobahn um die Hauptstadt hat „Washington“ keinen guten Ruf mehr. „Der Amerikaner“ riecht die vornehme Korruption der Elite. Das hat die Tea Party kapiert. Aktivisten mischen das Opfergefühl mit Regierungs- und Intellektuellenfeindlichkeit, mit Glauben an die Einzigartigkeit Amerikas und mit Skepsis gegenüber dem „Alien“ Barack Obama – und schon hat man eine Bewegung, die dem besagten einen Prozent bestens passt.
(Outside the Beltway "Washington" has a poor reputation. The average American and smell the corruption of the elite class. The Tea Party understands this well. The activists combine this feeling of victimization with attacks on "the Government" and with anti-intellectualism, with faith in "American Exceptionalism" and suspicion of the "alien" Barack Obama. They have built a movement which perfectly suits the interests of the top 1%.)
Democrats and progressives are paralyzed in the face of Tea Party intransigence which is amplified by the complicity of the mass media outlets like Fox News and CNN:
Das progressive Amerika erscheint wie gelähmt. Dass nach Umfragen an die drei Viertel der Amerikaner die Steuern der Reichsten erhöhen möchten, blieb in den Verhandlungen ohne Effekt. Da kann man nur noch hoffen, dass intelligente Plantagenbesitzer irgendwann einsehen, dass ihr System keine Zukunft hat, weil die Nation zerfällt und nicht mithalten kann mit der Konkurrenz weltweit.
(Progressives seem paralyzed. The fact that polls indicate that 3/4 of all Americans want to raise taxes on the wealthy had zero effect on the negotiations. So one can only hope that intelligent plantation owners realize at some point that the system has no future, for the nation is collapsing and can no longer compete with the global competition. )
Freitag's publisher, Jakob Augstein, is even more alarmist his column in Der Spiegel (English, Deutsch). For Augstein, the United States is no longer even a Western nation:
The US is a country where the system of government has fallen firmly into the hands of the elite. An unruly and aggressive militarism set in motion two costly wars in the past 10 years. Society is not only divided socially and politically -- in its ideological blindness the nation is moving even farther away from the core of democracy. It is losing its ability to compromise.
America has changed. It has drifted away from the West.
Like Konrad Ege, Jakob Augstein sees the US as an oligarchy, with Tea Party populism simply reinforcing the policies serving the wealthy elite. America is dysfunctional. and as a nation it serves as a negative model for Europe:
Still, America's fate should serve as a warning: We must protect our political culture, our institutions and our state. The success of Thilo Sarrazin, with his anti-Muslim message, shows that even Germany isn't free of the kind of cultural coldness that can eventually ossify the vital functions of the political system. Our society has already made significant and deplorable steps on the path towards growing inequality and de-democratization.
Nevertheless, at least one good opportunity springs from America's fate: The further the United States distances itself from us, the more we will (have to) think for ourselves, as Europeans. The West? That's us.
We Americans have been here before and have managed to find our way back to our values - Western values. I'm not throwing in the towel....yet.
David, do you think that the Tea Party will eventually split off from the Republicans once it is strong enough?
What arguments indicate into and which ones against such a development?
Posted by: Zyme | August 06, 2011 at 01:49 PM
Zyme, I don't see the Tea Party as forming a separate third party in the US. For now, the Tea Party OWNS the Republican Party - and has pushed it far to the right. And every Republican candidate for president except one (Huntsman, who has no chance) has pledged allegiance to the Tea Party.
For now, the Republican Party is happy to do the bidding of the Tea Party and its billionaire financial backers who call the shots.
Posted by: David | August 06, 2011 at 05:33 PM
Having spent some time recently in more reactionary parts of the West (Eastern Washington, Eastern Oregon, Idaho) I can tell you a lot of the problem emanates from these places. The backward-looking people in these places have too much power in Washington, while the big urban states are underrepresented. They believe themselves to be defending the "real" American way of life, but it's just their version.
They deeply do not care what happens to cities, to minorities, to the poor. They feel they are lucky to have escaped "all that."
Posted by: Hattie | August 08, 2011 at 03:52 PM
Hattie, I spent some time in southern Idaho and felt a strong Mormon presence there. Is that also the case in eastern Washington?
Posted by: David | August 09, 2011 at 05:16 AM
David: The Mormons are EVERYWHERE in the west. They are a strong presence in Hawaii. They have a university here, and the East Hawaii Cultural Center, a major tourist trap on Oahu, is Mormon owned. The last mayor of Honolulu was a Mormon, and he tried and (luckily) failed to become governor in the last election. He is a buffed up Hawaiian guy named Mufi Hanneman who went to Harvard and is as phony as the proverbial three dollar bill.
I knew people in the east were not very aware of what Mormons are up to when Massachusetts elected a Mormon as governor. If they had known what we know out here about Mormons, they would not have done that.
I very much admire the Mormon environmentalist writer, Terry Tempest Williams, but otherwise I can't abide Mormonism. It's a religion of fools and opportunists.
There is plenty of material the net, if you care to inform yourself. Some poll I read avers that Mormons are, in spite of how well they think of themselves, the most unpopular religious sect in the U.S. I can well believe that!
I hope Romney is the Republican nominee, because he couldn't possibly win.
Posted by: Hattie | August 12, 2011 at 01:33 PM
"They have a university here, and the East Hawaii Cultural Center, a major tourist trap on Oahu, is Mormon owned. The last mayor of Honolulu was a Mormon, and he tried and (luckily) failed to become governor in the last election. He is a buffed up Hawaiian guy named Mufi Hanneman who went to Harvard and is as phony as the proverbial three dollar bill...."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYU-Hawaii
Actually, it's the Polynesian Cultural Center.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_Cultural_Center
Mufi Hannemann ran for Governor as a Democrat but lost in the primary to Neil Abercrombie. Mufi is of Samoan and German descent, and was Honolulu's first Samoan-American mayor. But he is the second Mormon to be mayor of Honolulu (Neal Blaisdell was the first).
According to Wikipedia, "Hawaii has the highest concentration of Latter-day Saints of U.S. states that do not border Utah."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints_in_Hawaii#See_also
Posted by: Brandon | August 13, 2011 at 04:29 PM