Dear George,
The beauty of America’s one-party system is its efficiency at eliminating inconvenient candidates who become a little too populist for comfort. America is a white, male oligarchy, first, last and always. No candidate who dreams of empowering the people has a snowball’s chance in Hell of occupying the Oval Office until the oligarchy has leeched any and all populist impulses from said candidate.
Arbitrary labels are the desiccants that turn a candidate’s populist dreams into dried pods in an empty shell. The best labels are those that divide and weaken.
It is a fact that both HillBill and bamaobama are getting a little too populist for comfort. It is tempting to dismiss their rhetoric as so much posturing to garner votes. The problem is that when a candidate raises the mob’s expectations, the mob puts pressure on said candidate to deliver once he or she is in office.
So the oligarchy has rolled out the two labels that stand the best chance of neutralizing them both: race (with its implication of black militancy) and gender (with its implication of bra-burning feminists). These labels are precious jewels guaranteed to divert America’s attention from a crumbling economy, the upward flow of capital and foreign enterprises that are trashing America both at home and overseas.
The most powerful labels are those grounded in illusion. The use of “race” overlooks the fact that race is a false category that has no basis in reality. To imply great differences between individuals on the basis of insignificant morphological differences is pure fantasy, which is why it works so well. (Read the rest of the letter...)
