Unpublished: The Political Tragedy of America

Here's the political tragedy of America. Most of the poor people in America are White people. There are more poor rural Whites than there are poor urban Blacks. But those two groups are so separated by walls of suspicion and distrust that the greatest political force in America today--poor to middle class persons of all colors--remains divided and thus conquered by powerful monied and political interests.

America is built around two great ideas that sit in tension, democracy and capitalism. Tending to that fraught relationship is our Grand Experiment. It is, I would argue, the great question of our generation. Shall capitalism come to control democracy? Or shall democracy control capitalism? Over the last few decades capitalism has come to rule and dominate. The political and military machinery of America is increasingly being run by corporate and monied interests. America today is a corporate oligarchy.

--from an unpublished post pondering the divisions that separate poor and middle-class voters from becoming a powerful voting coalition