It's a pain not being able to cry. I wish I could. Tears definitely achieve a dramatic effect. Somehow, though, I've lost the capacity to cry.
But really, is there any other recourse than for all of us to shed tears? I'm writing this diary right now because this special day called the "Iraq War Moratorium" is tomorrow. And guess what?
Not a single one of my friends knew about it. I spent the last hour IMing people, posting it on my status profile on facebook, finding the Iraq War Moratorium facebook group with all of 29 people. Googling it and not finding http://iraqmoratorium.org/ as the first site.
I finished my school day today and looked on DK's recommended, and saw the "You idiots." post, and my jaw dropped. The Republicans did it again. They won in 2004 by putting gay marriage and abortion on every ballot, they set the terms of debate then... and they did it again just today.
I want to grieve because we have no organized opposition, no banner to rally around, no specific common cause to confront them with.
A majority with no courage, no cause and no common bond will never be a majority.
An Iraq War Moratorium without publicity - without newspaper advertisements, TV commercials, chain e-mails among professionals, chain facebook messages among college students, chain MSN, Yahoo! and AIM messages among high school students will never, not in a million years, achieve what we need to achieve.
A cause can only succeed with dedication and concentration, so much so that the slightest insult or distraction by the opposition does not deter us from our goal.
I took a break from writing this at this point, and my indignation has receded somewhat. I took a black plastic garbage back and cut up about 40 long strips to wear and distribute tomorrow to those who want them. I'm hoping to distribute them to my friends and classmates.
But back to the point - Listen. I was reading another comment the other day about why the Europeans and people around the world were so disappointed in Americans. The reason was that they were incredulous that we Americans were not on the streets demanding change and reform. Bush might be bad, but the fact that we here on the left cannot formally organize ourselves and declare our unyielding opposition disconcerts me.
It's almost like there are competing factions on our side: End the War Now, I Feel Guilty Because We Destroyed Iraq, I Want To Support the Troops But At The Same Time End The War, I'm Scared Of Recepercussions But The War Is A Bad Idea, Please Do Something About The War, The War Is Not Very Good Right Now, etc. etc.
Can we make a decision? Are we staying in Iraq or not? Are we doing the "new strategy" thing? Or how about the "pull out" thing? Are we going to fracture ourselves based on the several differences on how to pull out, when to pull out, whether we should pull out?
I want us to be organized and effective. That Iraq War Moratorium needs to hit on all sides - professional (get businesses to do it), public (get your local, state and national representatives to do it), educational (get teachers and students at all levels of education to do it). It won't happen without a focused effort.
Right now we're not a majority. Has anyone thought what it means to be a Democrat these days? We have "conservative Democrats", "bush dogs", "capitulators"... but what does it mean, beyond the vague idea of "standing up for Democratic principles?" Is the situation so bad that we have to resort to a web of generalities?
"Restoring the Constitition" - sounds nice, but really, it's quite vague, isn't it?
"Ending the Iraq War" - getting better, but still, pretty vague.
"Planning legislation to redeploy all troops starting __ and ending __ with total troop distribution ____" - that's a heck of a lot better.
You see what I'm getting at?
Right now, the way I see it, here's what the left stands for:
Abortion Rights.
Gay Rights.
Gun Control.
End the Iraq War.
Media Deconglomeration.
Social Security Stability.
Fiscal Responsibility.
Doing Something About Health Care.
Prudent Foreign Policy.
Affirmative Action.
Most of those are unspecific, and that list is pretty small. The thing is, though, trying to do all of that at once is a mistake. For any one of those topics, there's no clear direction. There's simply an identification of a problem.
Most importantly, observe that there are people who make each of these their life's issues. So instead of having a solidified left that can stand equally well on all of these issues, we have fragmented minorities who lobby for their own purposes, here on the left.
Progress won't work like that. Pick one or two issues and stick with it. Solidify the left. Ending the Iraq war is an excellent banner. If we don't have a common cause to unite around, we're not a majority. We're just a very, very, very big collection of minorities.
And that's why we're failing in the Senate. Our weakly bound coalition of minorities easily fractures and join the more powerful, alluring Republican majority.
I'm a complainer. That's why I wrote this diary. It's probably not very coherent and makes me come off as very naive. The writing style is probably choppy, since I'm not a very good writer. But I'm doing my part. I've cut up enough strips of black plastic for 40 clones of myself. I'm going to solidify opposition on my college campus. Peace out.