Oh well. I and others have discussed at great length over several years
the following points, but I don't have the energy this week to try to
develop any of them in a post or posts for this list. Since this
discussion, despite its lack of relevance to Eliot, seems to be
continuing, perhaps the following naked propositons will at least offer
some new or different bones to chew. As offered here they are
oversimplified and undeveloped, so it would be redundant to point that
out.

----------

In U.S. history, significant social cchange has occurred only as a
direct or indirect result of the actions of a minority acting outside
the electoral system. This is true even of the obvious exception,
Licoln's administration. The _very_ small abolitionist movement
(interlnked with the intrnational left, freaked the Slavedrivers out of
their ever-loving minds, so that they split the Democratic Party _and_
when as a result a candidate pledge NOT to interfere with slavery but
only to limit its exent was elected, they split the Union and the
consequent Civil War brought about the abolition of slavery. It is very
doubtful that without John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry Lincoln would
have been elected.

The politician most resonsible for the passign of the Civil Rights
legilation in the '60s was a racist pig, Republican Senator Everett
Dirksen, who proclaimed it an idea whose time had come. By this he mant,
"those people" (inclujding rioters in Watts) are going to make the
nation near to ugovernable if we don't try to satisfy them to some
extent.

Last year, in a speech to a Bankers group, Obama  told them "I'm the
only thing standing between you and tghe men in pitchforks." Whether
that is true or not at the present time, it accurately indicates the
role the DP has played for over a century in blunting and absorbing
social protest movements. It is the great barrier to significant change
in the United States. (The Kennedy brothers, for example, worked hard to
head off both the March on Washinggton and the growth of the Mississippi
Fredom Democratic Party. Fortunately they failed.

The Populist Movement died when it was absorbed into the DP.

Roosevelt's creation of social security was mainly to head off the
gathering popularity of the Townsend Plan. The only really new actionof
his Administration was the creation of the WPA, which was already being
replaced by the PWA when the war made both unnecessary. Roosevelt
brought on renewed unemployment in 1938 by his moves towards balancing
the budget.

The Nixon Administration followed the geneal strtegy of Bismack a
century ealier. It was two-pronged, and intended to bring the '60s
movement to a halt. On the one hand, a considerable batch of "prgressive
legilation (e.g. OSHA).  On the other hand the lauching of a program to
build the machinerery of repression, the political wrapping of which was
the War on Drugs. (Clinton and Bush both 'improved' that repressive
machinery, especially Clinton with his "Effective Death Penalty and
Anti-Terrorism Act." He also "ended welfare as we have known it," with
much (unreported) misery since then. Probably Monica saved Social
Secuity. (Nixon had planned in 1969 to drop a nuclear bomb on the
Chinese installations in North Vietnam through which aid from China and
the USSR reached North Vietnam. He was demoralized by the size and
miltancy of the November Moratorium that year and changed his plans. The
anti-war movment, however, was already weakening, and was dealt its
deathblow by the presidential candidacy of George McGovern.

The conservative swing of u.s. politics began with several actions by
the Carte Administration:

1. His refusal to anwer a letter from Bishop Romero, leading to the
murder of Romero and the beginning of the U.S. ravaging of the people of
Central America

2. His sponsoring of Indonesia's campaign of terror in East Timor ( the
weapons for that coming frm the United States)

3. Airline deregulation

4. Appointment of Vokcker as Fed Chairman

5. His launching of the Afghanistan War through CIA intervention.

6. Allowing the ex-Shah to come to the U.S. and his insane intended
helicopter 'rescue' operation.

------

In human history as in human evolution* Contingency remains in many ways
the decisive factor. (*Cf. the asteroid that destroyed the diosaurs,
making room for mamals and thus eventually for primates.) Mass social
movements cannot be willed into existence, though their appearance may
be deflected or delayed by the 10s of thousands of well-meaning people
who remained attached to thefutile hope of social change through the
election of "good people."

Carrol

P.S. A perhaps apocryphal but perhaps actual anecdote in Illinois
politics. A man goes to an Alderman's offie in Chcago to request support
in running for some local or state election. The Alderman asks, "Who
sent you?" The man replies, "No one sent me, I came on my own." "We
don't talk to somebody nobody sent." Someone sent Obama when he ran for
the State Senate?

In 1948 (and this is hard history) Stevenson wanted to run for the
Senate; dogulas wanted to run for Governor. Jake Arvey said, no, Douglas
run for Senate, Tevenson for Governor. Jake Arvy was an attorney fot he
Chicago Mob, and involved in their move to Las Vegas.