Moyers' Straw and Hollow Men

In a recent program, the now/again-returned-to-TV icon of "liberal punditry," Bill Moyers," opined broadly on the matter of the practibility of those who advocate for a Constitutional Amendment to rectify the wrongs ratified by the OPUS DEIsts on the SCROTUS in the "Citizens United Decision.

"Don’t worry," Moyers encouraged the advocates of this procedure, "if you’re called naíve. Don't worry about cynics who mock you or fatalists who declare that a constitutional amendment is impossible. That’s nonsense. We’ve amended the constitution 27 times in our history. Back in 1971, the amendment to lower the voting age to 18 was the quickest to be ratified in U.S history, four months following its passage by Congress. And after 13 years without a drink, in 1933, Americans okayed the amendment to repeal prohibition faster than a saloon’s swinging door."

I like and admire Bill Moyers, mostly. But Bill, like it or not, is "one of them." He's sucked his whole lifetime off the corpoRat teat. He's internalized their interests. He's drunk too deeply of the Kool-Aid of the Status Quo.

What Bill conveniently neglects to mention in his account of successful amendments is that nearly a THOUSAND Amendments have been proposed, since the first ten, and that only SEVENTEEN have succeeded.

Another thing is that there are really astonishing differences between the amendments he cite as successes and the one that his arguement is designed to buttress. For example, in the case of the 18-year-old vote, there was a war going on in which 18-year-olds were doing a disproportionate share of the dying. The Oners/Owners accepted it as a necessary part of legitimating/legitimizing the war. There was almost NO opposition to it, to go along with the general popular support.

And it had no deleterious repercussions for the Owners. Eighteen-year-olds are, if anything, easier to baffle with bullshit than their more mature counterparts (think "popular music?!"); they're immersed in the propaganda and schooled to accept it without much resistance. (Is there REALLY any difference between Bud and Coors? See what I mean?).

Also, predictably, it only temporarily and marginally enlarged the voting pool, as indolence, ignorance, indulgence and apathy sooner or later overwhelmed the attraction of the franchise. What percentage of 18-21 year-olds actually VOTE? It was about 45% in '08; 18-22 million in raw numbers. Who votes doesn't matter; who counts the votes matters.

And the repeal of prohibition? C'mon, Bill. That's an OBVIOUS strawman. Citizens suffered OBVIOUS consequences from Prohibition, and repealing it was HUGELY popular. Plus, far from OPPOSING it, the Oners/Owners enthusiastically and visibly SUPPORTED repeal.

And NEITHER had the consolidated and determined MIGHT of the ENTIRE industrial-corpoRat-financial-capital-military-ownership establishment arrayed against them.

The best counterexample to Moyers' and others' wishful thinking on the amendment proceess is the ERA. After 40 years, it STILL couldn't pass. It fell two or three STATES short of ratification, and it faced only token, marginal, wackloon/fucktard opposition.

Against ANY attempt to "amend" CU out of existence will be ALL THE MONEY that is already involved in buying and maintaining Congress and the Executive Office in the order and sympathies they now exemplify, serving the interests they NOW supinely serve.

The ONLY way to avoid the Congress is to go individually through the states and get THIRTY-EIGHT state legislatures to ratify it. In case you didn't know it already, state legislatures are EVERY BIT as corrupt as the Feds are, and can be bought cheaper. You'd only need to BLOCK it in 13 states.