Jim Booth over at The Savoy Truffle (sirpaulsbuddy, that is) walks us through the Republic at the present time.

I’m looking at the Preamble…and I’m not seeing anything there that suggests that taking from the poor and giving to the rich is providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, establishing justice, insuring domestic tranquility, securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, OR forming a more perfect union.

What I’m seeing is much more like France in 1789 – all privileges and benefits accruing to an aristocracy – our government (composed overwhelmingly of millionaires) – and a “city of Paris” (corporations and their bosses) – and all burdens such as taxes accruing to an oppressed majority (ordinary working stiffs like us, boys and girls).

Now what happened in France, boys and girls, was a revolution – and almost all the aristocrats and city officials ended up with their heads forcibly removed from their bodies.

It’s hard to say where the current power grab is taking us. Even if you hate Bush and the rest of the kleptocracy, you have to at least respect the breathtaking insight into the American character possessed by a guy like Master Puppeteer Karl Rove. The ways the junta has gamed the system, the press, and the people is nothing short of remarkable. Truly, this has been one of the most brilliant takeovers in the history of the world, and if Rove ever writes an honest memoir it will immediately displace Machiavelli’s The Prince as the defining work in the canon of political power and domination. It remains to be seen whether a hard rain’s gonna fall on this current crop of Caesars or whether the braintrust has in fact conjured a new empire. I know what I suspect, but I might well be indulging in wishful thinking.

It’s worth noting, though, that there is an inherent instability in the coalition that has ushered the GOP to its current deathgrip on power. The Country Club Right has been playing the Trailer Park Right at least since Reagan, manipulating a growing population base through carefully constructed and communicated messages about “values.” This strategy has worked so effectively because we live in an age of mind-numbing social and technological change, and the less educated classes of any society are always going to be most disturbed when they feel their lives being batted about by forces they don’t quite understand. In so many ways, what’s happening now is similar to the dynamics driving the much-misunderstood Luddite Rebellion in England.

The Luddites, who took their name from the mythical hero General Ned Ludd, revolted against technological advances in the textile industry from 1811 to 1816. While the term “Luddite” popularly connotes someone who is anti-technology, the actual rebellion was more critically aimed at technology which threatened the sanctity of culture (Rybczynski Taming the Tiger; Pynchon “Is it O.K. to Be a Luddite?”). Their reaction was not against progress – they gladly used the newest weaving technology available, and were “interested in innovation and technical improvements to make their work easier” – but were instead opposed to the dehumanizing dislocations of the industrial economy (Smith). (For more on the Luddites, go here and scroll down to the bottom of page 184.)

The Republican power elite correctly sensed that a reactionary religious message appeals to the desperate need for stability in large segments of the working class, and it effectively put its political heft and considerable resources to the task of mobilizing the religious right around a backward-looking vision of an eternal absolute, a fixed point, a promise to slow the world down so that sense can be made of it.

The problem is that the Moneyed Right and the Fundamentalist Right are not natural allies. In fact, the developmentalist profit-drive of the former is the primary source of the technological advances that so threaten the latter – these two groups are, in fact, natural enemies. I keep placing technology at the center of the issue here – if you look at all the religious right’s hot-buttons you’ll notice that technology is implicated time and time again. Stem-cell research? Check. Abortion and other questions around reproduction? Check. And while the chimeral “issue” of gay marriage isn’t directly technological in nature, you can argue that it’s an artifact of social dynamics that can only occur in a highly technological system, and it’s worth noting that the locales at the center of the issue are among the most tech-advanced in America: SF, LA, Boston, etc.

I watch the way the Terri Shiavo case is shifting and evolving, and I wonder if the pro-life monster is starting to slip the Agendamaster’s leash. Terri’s dad was in the news blaming Jeb Bush for not doing anything, for instance, and that perhaps put Jeb in a position where he felt the need to do something dramatic to save face in the eyes of the base, hence the almost-showdown from a couple days ago. You and I might understand that the power elites don’t really care enough about this kind of dust-up to get their hands dirty, but the pro-lifers don’t.

Can the Country Clubbers keep the Trailer Parkers under control, or will the inherent tension and opposition between the two groups come to a head? Again, hard to say. Bush says he’s earned a lot of political capital and he aims to spend it. Maybe, but if he isn’t careful about how he spends it, he might find himself having to fight off an uprising in his own camp.