John Boehner's Perestroika

So a budget compromise has been reached, and we're all saved (or something).  And John Boehner is a big big big winner (or something):

(CBS News) House Speaker John Boehner emerged the star when tense negotiations among congressional leaders wound up heading off a government shutdown, in the eyes of CBS News political analyst John Dickerson.

"He's the big victor, indeed," Dickerson told "Early Show on Saturday Morning" co-anchor Jeff Glor. ... The number of people (among Republicans) unhappy with the Speaker is small.

The cuts are something like one percent of the budget.  Well, OK then.

When Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985, the Soviet system had been running down for decades.  The collapse of the Soviet lunar missions in the middle of the 1960s was the first obvious, public example.  While the USA went on to Apollo 11, the Russians couldn't organize or fund their venture.

Looking back, this shouldn't have been a surprise.  Nor should have been the utter collapse of the communist system, although it's surprising how many Useful Idiots in the west still make excuses for them.  As the Political Scientists say, the result was over-determined:

1. A small, closed elite had continually tightened their grip on the Organs of the State.  Government functions which were ostensibly technocratic and "scientific" were actually driven by fealty to ideology.  Changes of leadership at the top (Khrushchev, Brezhnev, etc) made not a whit of difference in the rate of decay.

2. The elite (nomenklatura) rigged the system to make life much easier and more pleasant for the elite.  They had special access to apartments and dachas, cars, western style shopping - all hidden from the masses.

3. In an attempt to keep the masses from becoming restless - after all, the country had been forged in the fires of revolution - the elite borrowed vast sums from the western banking system.  While this provided the desired short term supply of amenities to buy off the masses, the debt levels quickly became unsustainable.

Gorbachev was the last of the Soviet reformers, which isn't surprising because he was the last of the Soviet leaders.  The system collapsed in a rubble of unsustainability.

I'm struck by the parallels in our political system:

1. A small, closed elite of Ivy League graduates have a firm grip on the Organs of the State.  Ostensibly technocratic and scientific, department heads are actually selected for orthodoxy and loyalty to the Coke/Pepsi elite party structure.

2. The elite rig the system to make life easier and more comfortable for themselves, in a way that they try to hide from us.  California fire fighters who can retire at 50 with 85% pay, concealed carry permits for only the politically well-connected in Chicago and New York City, generous pay and perks for Congress - the elite truly are just like you and me, only better.

3. In an attempt to keep you and me quiet, the elite has borrowed vast sums to fund bridges to nowhere, airports nobody uses, and a "stimulus" that has essentially done nothing but fund the elite itself (i.e. pay for government workers).  The debt has now become essentially unsustainable.

And so we see bold moves like John Boehner's budget compromise.  There's no real change here - it trims around the edges when major chunks need simply to be loped off.  And so we see the change isn't designed to actually solve the problem.  Like Gorbachev's reforms, it's designed to perpetuate the power of the ruling elite.

Many of you see the solution to your problems in resorting to market mechanisms in place of direct planning. Some of you look at the market as a lifesaver for your economies. But, comrades, you should not think about lifesavers but about the ship, and the ship is socialism.

- Mikhail Gorbachev to the Warsaw Bloc, 1985

I've said it before, and often enough to become a bore: the problem isn't the Democrats, and the solution isn't the Republicans.  The problem is an entrenched elite that has increasing contempt for you and me.  But we have something that the inmates of the Soviet Union didn't: the Internet and New Media entirely eliminates the need for Glastnost; indeed, it is glastnost.  With a vengeance, and on steroids

A short five months after an election of historic proportions, driven by an Internet-enabled revolt against the elite and a demand - in a very real and legally binding sense to a large number of now ex-incumbents - we see the elite tweaking, not reforming.  Even this election wasn't enough to make the rest fear for their seats.

The Romans had a saying about the barbarians outside the frontiers of the Empire: Oderint dum metuant. Let them hate, as long as they fear.  Today's elite hates today's reform movement.

They don't fear it enough.  Yet.