Change is tough. So liberals can't just leave it to Obama
Tired by the last month and a half of national insanity: gun-toting tea-baggers screaming Hitler and Nazism at the idea of PROVIDING HEALTH CARE TO ALL AMERICANS? If so, read today's Tomasky piece from the Guardian - it will remind you of why we have no reason to feel down!
I've been a fan of Michael Tomasky since I first read him in the Village Voice (for you youngsters, the Voice was a great progressive newspaper before it became a mere listing for clubs and pro-sex services) - but never have I admired Tomasky as much as I have reading his political commentary in the Guardian over the last year or so.
As I scour the web daily for ANY good news about our president and the battle for healthcare (or ANY good news in general), I've been sinking into an anxiety laced mild depression, unable to shake my fears that the right-wing (I'm talking about the Democrats) - and the insane (I'm talking about the Beckian Palinites), are actually going to tip the boat and sink this nation (and the administration) into a status quo swamp of fear and paranoia and ignorance! Somehow - and I can't quite figure it, Republicans have scared the spineless shitbags in DC into thinking that America looks to corporations for salvation!
And while Tomasky concurs that things ain't going well, that EXACTLY where he pleads that we must pick up the ball and run:
For euphoria to give way to disillusionment is premature. Instead, supporters should battle for his healthcare bill
And it feels that way, doesn't it? Suddenly, there's a fog of despair spreading across the political landscape and a palpable dismay that Obama has failed and that we're back to where we started. I know it's hard to avoid, but Tomasky blows the whistle for a time out and a simple reminder:
Liberals in my country tend to have a deeply romantic view of political movements. When we think of the civil rights movement, we think of the highlights, the stirring moments. Memory tricks us, and the media, which speak in such shorthand, help perpetuate the trick. So we tend to think that Rosa Parks sat on a bus, Martin Luther King gave some great speeches, decent Americans recoiled at racist violence on the nightly news, and boom, change happened. The reality was that nine long years passed from Parks's act of civil disobedience until Lyndon Johnson signed the civil rights bill – nine years of often mundane and inglorious work. And even then, the civil rights bill didn't really fix the problem of African Americans being denied the vote, so Congress had to go back the next year and pass the voting rights act.
Please click through and read the column - you won't be disappointed. I'm feeling better already...