Ya Basta

Rather than engage in rhetorical self-delusion, or fall prey to the duopoly's political master-narrative, a report on local tea party protests in Washington's Tri-City Herald emphasizes the event's position against the two-party bipoligarchy.

In some cases they'll be setting aside their political differences -- forgetting for an afternoon that they're Republicans, Democrats or Libertarians, whether they're liberal or conservative on social issues -- to unite for a common cause, to tell the federal government, "Enough is enough."

"We're not pressing one party over the other, but we are going to kick the bums out," said Leon Howard, one of the event organizers. "The major parties -- I call 'em Republicrats -- have both been taking us down this road."

However, it may not be enough to simply "kick the bums out." Big business is more than happy to invest in the system when Republicrat panhandlers go begging for bucks. In a column at the Socialist Worker, Lance Selfa provides a materialist analysis of how both old and new sectors of the economy navigate the partisan divide within the federal system, and maintain their influence despite personnel changes in the Congress and White House.

It would be misleading to conclude that the Democrats simply represent one section or coalition of business, while Republicans represent another. The operation of the two-party system assures that these divisions within American business are ad hoc and don't congeal into permanent ideological camps. Business must learn to operate within the U.S. federal system, which means that industries that may be big Republican donors at the presidential level may also support local Democratic political machines.