Groucho Marxist

Like many of my generation, I listened to Firesign Theatre's album proclaiming "All Hail Marx & Lennon" with its cover portraits of Groucho & John above what looked like a May Day parade reviewing stand at the Kremlin.

But the stream of altered consciousness comedy of "How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All" (1969) really had nothing do to with the cover's counter culture sight gag... Firesign Theatre left that aspect of social commentary to Monty Python's Flying Circus.

PRESENTER: The struggle of class against class is a what?
KARL MARX: A political struggle.

-- Communist Quiz, "Another Monty Python Record" (1971)

Or the confrontation within Monty Python & The Holy Grail (1975) in which the questing king encounters a man who vociferously objects to the very concept of monarchy.

ARTHUR: Shut up, will you. Shut up!
DENNIS: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system.
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help, help! I'm being repressed!
ARTHUR: Bloody peasant!
DENNIS: Oh, what a give-away.

In my experience, most Americans have little or no understanding of Communism, Capitalism, or any economics... In theory or practice.

Academics will tell you voters are frequently convinced to support candidates, parties and policies which undermine their own well being... At least when it comes to the "middle class," you know... The segment of America the people who own it would be more than willing to live without, and so are actively butchering & cannibalizing.

The media mostly falls prey to, and then perpetuates, the same deceptions, distractions and distortions that afflict the electorate. Nothing like stoking racial resentment to take everybody's minds off the politics of class, and why there's a need for struggle.

On MSNBC, they've been running a promo (for just about as long as Tea-baggers have been screaming about Obama's alleged socialist agenda) in which Joe Scarborough says "This class warfare approach never works."

While you can presume that as a smarmy Gingrich-era Republican former Congressman from the "Redneck Riviera" of Florida's panhandle, his straw man is a self-described progressive, the real class warfare is ongoing and works all too well... The one where an economic oligarchy pushes the United States toward a third-world economy where the fabulously rich dictate to the vilified permanently poor whose future and potential for social mobility have been stolen.

Class Warfare is real & happening now... Just not the way Joe thinks.

Audio Embed: Dave Ross, KIRO-FM/Seattle, 7/21/10.

Read: Poor Little CEOs -- The government's giving them everything they want, yet still they whine.