Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Tuesday, January 03, 2012

"Pity the Billionaire": Thomas Frank on the "Unlikely Comeback of the Right" Ahead of Iowa Caucus

Bestselling author and Harper’s magazine columnist Thomas Frank argues that as President Barack Obama fails to provide a coherent, progressive economic alternative, the right has staged an unlikely comeback — despite the ongoing fallout from the 2008 financial crisis for which its trademark policies were largely responsible. Frank’s new book is called "Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right." "[Conservatives after 2008] didn’t take the pundit’s advice: they didn’t move to the center, they didn’t moderate themselves. They did the opposite," Frank says. "They purged their moderate wings, moved dramatically to the right with the Tea Party movement and enjoyed this incredible success in the 2010 election." Frank says whether the conservatives will succeed in 2012 is still "anyone’s guess" and says Obama should "start getting some of the rhetoric of the Occupy movement in there. He needs to start talking about the 1 percent. He needs to start talking about what has happened and why over the last 30 years." We also speak with The Nation correspondent John Nichols about the Occupy movement in Iowa.

Video
Source: Democracy Now! 

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