Cooperation Co-opted Here’s the thing: Obama always promises to work with Republicans, but Republicans don’t cooperate. Their concept of cooperation is “do what we say or we’ll do nothing at all.” It seems to have gotten worse over time, maybe since Nixon. The whole impeachment thing seems to have set a partisan divide in place that cannot be reconciled. The Reagan “small government” line has taken hold in the mind of voters to the extent that Republican politicians cannot recognize that their sainted Ronnie didn’t shrink government, he increased it; didn’t lower taxes, increased them; didn’t eliminate the deficit, increased it. Or else they simply won’t admit it was all spin and lies, although even the author of Trickle Down Economics, David Stockman, eventually repudiated the concept. Clinton co-opted much of the conservative agenda, to the country’s harm, particularly by 2008, when financial deregulation bit the country hard, leaving little recourse for the next Democrat to deal with the legacy of the incompetent buffoon, George W. Bush, who left the country mired in two wars and without the tax revenue it needed or the economic nous to deal with it. The end of the Greenspan era couldn’t come soon enough, and didn’t. Maybe this is what it really comes down to, the deliberate conflation of the economy and the society, pandering to the far reaches of the latter with anti-abortion legislation, no effective gun control, and false-flag racially discriminatory anti-voting laws, while serving the interests of the extreme end of the former, the 1% (and themselves, of course, servants of the 1%), with insane tax cuts and the elimination of any help for the poor, let alone any support for the middle class or those poised to transition to it, all with a rhetoric that treats poverty and illness as moral failings. And the country falls for it. Regularly. Clinton was a good President, especially domestically. But his personal transgressions were enough for the Republicans to gain the White House, and key governorships around the country have ensured a stranglehold on the House for many years yet to come. Carter was, if not a good President, at least not a bad one, who had to struggle more with foreign affairs than left him any way to deal with domestic, which was especially unfortunate with the rise of OPEC, let alone Iran, let alone the reds-under-the-beds fervour of Reagan. Obama, too, has been a better President than he gets credit for, if only because of Obamacare, a flawed but significant revision in the nation’s vision of itself as a progressive country. And, yes, that vision is itself flawed, although when “progressive” became a curse I’m not sure. Does it go all the way back to FDR? Sometimes I think so. The assaults on Social Security certainly indicate as much. But the assaults on civil rights suggests it goes back even further, and you’re left wondering if any progress remains possible, with so much left yet to do in making that “more perfect union”. The Republicans serve wealth alone. They hate anyone not them. And they even hate themselves. They have built their party on envy, on greed, on selfishness. They will not stop, because they can’t, not any more. It’s too late for them to suddenly become reasonable. It will take generations, if it ever happens at all, and the so-called “tea party” is doing everything it can to ensure it won’t. And the 1% are doing everything they can to ensure that any conservative impulse serves their interests and not those of the nation.