Jack & Jill Politics

Well, it’s not dead—yet. Capitalism’s sick and the prognosis isn’t that good. It’s on a kind of day-by-day, minute-by-minute world watch.
This isn’t a pro-Marxist screed. Then again, I don’t know. I may be Marxist, or socialist, if there’s some decipherable distinction. I know it deals with a communalism of which I’m fond. But then again, I don’t read thick texts with equally obtuse phrases like dialectical materialism and dictatorship of the proletariat, so I’m not really sure.
I never thought capitalism all bad. For one thing, at least it accumulates capital fast. Put into perspective, it was an improvement over the system it replaced—feudalism, itself an improvement over slavery. With each progression, more people got to own more stuff. Wait a minute. Isn’t that distribution of wealth, the very shady allocation that’s an affront to champions of capitalism, like Mitt Romney and Joe the Plumber?
Anyway, any system that makes work for the many a byproduct of the wealth of the few a principal tenet is bound to have major failings. Hey, maybe those titans of biz don’t really need any more workers. You know?
There’re other built-in shortcomings. If left unchecked, for instance, Chrysler can sell its new cars for $300 tomorrow—and put Ford and GM out of business. Anti-trust laws didn’t just fall out of the sky.
There’s also this problem that it hasn’t really been tested—not in a mass way. Back in the day, you could, by law, keep certain people out although many of them did much of the back-breaking work to contribute to the system’s “success.” No more. The longtime despised want in. In theory, there may be enough room— if the owners of the means of production settle for $50 mil a year instead of $2 billion. It’s lonely enough at the top.
And now, the Great Recession, brought to us by the misbehavior of the financial elite. Reminding folks of the Great Depression. Costs rising. The jobs remain scarce. Nearly just as bad, too many do not pay enough to meet bills. Obama stressing fairness. Occupied Wall Street highlighting the income disparities and promises more protests when the warm months arrive. The unrest has spread across the globe.
Funny thing about economic systems. The great unwashed don’t care what you call them. They either work for them or they don’t.
They watch but not always wait for a successful operation.

Pundits seem genuinely surprised that Newt Gingrich did not do as well in the debates in Florida as he did in South Carolina. Yes, Romney got rid of that silly grin and was more aggressive in his attacks on Newt. But I have a better answer: South Carolina. Remember President Obama and his “they cling to guns and religion” comments? He must have had South Carolina in mind. South Carolina is a beautiful looking place, especially the Low Country. The marshland flora bending in unison like green feathers against the wind and moss hanging longingly across wicked boughs will make you want to write a poem about… something, even if you’re not a poet. But it’s poor. The unemployment rate hovers around 10 percent. A new policy strips away weekly unemployment benefits if recipients refuse to take a minimum wage job. And, where racial attitudes are concerned, it’s somewhere, to be generous, in the early 1960s, when the road from Savannah, where I grew up, to Hilton Head Beach (then a “black beach”) was a ride through the “Sounder” movie. Blacks on porches of variably leaning shacks waved as you passed by. The fight over the rebel flag is as fresh today as when the Union Army stormed Fort Sumter. Just keep things as they are, no mater that it was change that improved their lot. It was in South Carolina where that Tea Party participant uttered that infamous cry: “Keep Your Government Hands off My Social Security.” The purported “values voters” selected the thrice married lothario over the three actual family men. The pundits emphasized he’d won a state primary. Coming from the near back of the pack, no less. Wow. Newt, an old Southern pol, knew it was more than that. And his manner—confident, cocky– showed it. Not so his less combatant comportment—or less effective combatant comportment–in Florida. That said something else: You’re not in South Carolina anymore.