Take from them everything

And give them nothing.

The other day when I posted about the practicalities of impeachment there was some brief discussion in the comments about it, and one of those commentating mentioned that the powerful don't usually change unless pressured by the people, that was a paraphrase there, but that was the gist of it. My response was that I disagreed with the use of the word "usually" and would instead say "always".

This was more than me just being in "eat the rich" mode, I would say that is a statement true of any power structure, and it is always true, no matter who holds that power, which means the struggle doesn't ever end.

This isn't a bad thing necessarily, but it is worth keeping in mind as we approach a likely period of backlash towards more liberal ideas and possible Democratic control in the nation, the war doesn't end if you win a battle, and in fact if you win enough of them your own generals become the enemy in turn.

The primary concern of any government, any power structure really, but we'll use government for now, is not the ability to run the nation, that is what it should be, and what it claims to be, but that is not the truth, the primary concern of any government is to remain the government in charge, that isn't precisely bad per se, if a government wants to get anything done it must plan ahead to stay in control, however that very necessity requires it to divorce itself from the grass roots that brought it there in the first place.

The current Republican party is a great example of this, they wed themselves to the "silent majority", the evangelicals and libertarians who had historically felt underrepresented in power, it promised them change and influence, but while coming to power they also had to deal with the oligarchs who actually funded the party, once attaining power those same oligarchs had to be appeased or else they would take their money and influence elsewhere, so the GOP talked like it was for the people, and took their socially conservative views into the platform, but the economic stuff, the things that actually make life better or worse for their base, was ignored in favor of massive giveaways to the rich and to corporations.

It took a while, but that conservative grass roots finally did wake up and is responsible for the Tea Party wave in 2010, as well as The Toddler, but of course once the Tea Party took power it too did little to stop corporate interests or to do anything productive for its base, as it too found that it needed support from the old money to remain influential.

The possible incoming liberal wave will face similar challenges, it doesn't rely on the same oligarchs for money, not as much anyway, but it will need to find a way to secure its power as well, I do not know precisely how that will happen, but I guarantee you that it will involve divorcing itself from the grass roots at some point. That some point will hopefully happen after the movement accomplishes some lasting change before it slips away from us entirely back into business as usual and we have to fight it once more.

So why do I use the title of this post? I am trying to make the point that it is not we who owe our leaders anything, when we select them by electing them, they have not earned the benefit of the doubt, they don't get a free pass to adapt to their new office, they must get to work, right away, because once they elected they are increasingly perishable when it comes to doing the things we elected them to do, we gave them nothing when we got them elected, what we did was give the movement power and they are an expression of that movement. We put them in power not for their sake, but for ours, and we must demand what they promised. Once elected they get nothing more unless they work for us. We take their work, take advantage of the power that we gave them, until they stop providing it, and once they do, we cast them aside because they are no longer useful.

The individuals in the government do not inherently deserve our respect, the government itself may, as an institution, but only so far as it serves the people, and those who accept positions of power within it deserve exactly as much respect as they earn, and here's the important thing, once they stop earning it, that respect carries them no farther at all.

This same point extends to labor as well, but is rather less complicated, if you are an employee, take as much as you can, and give them as little as you can, what it means in this context is don't do anything for free if you can possibly avoid it.

In either situation it's about the same, the powerful take what they take and that is quite enough already, we are under no obligation to give them more.