On the rec list today we have a diary expressing anguish over DADT. Meanwhile, we have the tireless Teacherken expressing despair over education reform. Yesterday we find out that democrats are unlikely to act on tax cuts. Yesterday, we also hear of Axelrod yet again beating up on the left. At this point, it is difficult not to be uncomfortably numb.
Again and again we are told that we must support the president and congressional democrats because the alternative is far worse. This is true. We are told that no progress will be made unless we elect democrats. However, it is difficult to see what progress is being made and towards what end progress can be made.
Can someone please tell me where the progress is being made? Can someone please tell me what issues are working in favor of progressive ends? I'm sorry, but I'm just not seeing it. We in the GLTB community are being relegated to the status of second-class citizens and are being given lectures about procedure to justify this. Congress is caving to Wall Street and deciding not to act on tax cuts. Rumor has it that the administration is going to appoint a corporate leader to replace Larry Summers.
As Teacherken points out, we see that education is being systematically dismantled so that charter schools can make a killing, so that wealthy don't have to pay for the education of poor people and minorities, and so that testing companies can make huge profits. The same thing happened with health insurance reform. Rather than finding ways to diminish the overwhelming power of insurance companies, that power has now been further increased and become more entrenched.
On and on it goes. I'm losing faith. I'm losing commitment. I was so filled with joy and hope on election night back in 2008. I and others like me had worked so hard for Obama and to ensure huge democratic majorities in the house and senate. We all cried with joy, hooted and hollerd as the numbers came in. Not only was this a historical moment, but we now had the power to pursue progressive policy and show the American people that it works.
How quickly this hope and joy turned into despair and anger. Strong supporters like to make fun of us, saying that we believe Obama has a magic wand and can just wave it and change everything. But that's not it at all. We know these things are complicated and take work. No, for me at least, the source of despair is that our democrats aren't even fighting for these things. They aren't even putting these things on the table. Instead they continue to work within the same conservative, free market, neo-liberal frames on all policy issues, allowing conservatives to define the terrain and field of possibilities, rather than putting for an alternative vision of the role of government and challenging the idea that trickle down economics and free market solutions are the best solutions.
As a consequence, we find ourselves trapped within the same plutocracy and oligarchy as before. We find ourselves in a country where all working and middle class Americans are second class citizens, where we live as indentured servants because we carry the vast majority of the debt, where policy caters primarily to big business not us, where we can just look on in horror as environmental catastrophe creeps ever closer, and where the world becomes ever crueler to the vast majority of Americans. Despair.
I don't know what else to say beyond the fact that I feel despair and anguish. The power of the conservatives-- and I'm not referring to republicans here, but the establishment in general --just seems to entrenched and overwhelming to change. Our procedural system is completely stacked against us. We also have a very large group of apologists who contribute to enabling this corrupt system, refusing to hold our elected officials accountable or take them to task for terrible pro-corporate policy that hurts all of us. What is to be done? And what, exactly, are the issues that we're making progress on? Unemployment continues to grow. Poverty continues to grow. Wages continue to stagnate. People feel less and less safe. These things are direct results of free market policies that de-regulate business and assault the working and middle class. What progress is being made? What can be done?
These days I find myself spending a lot of time reading Buddhist thinkers, the Stoics, and the Epicureans. These are all ethical and metaphysical philosophies organized around questions of how to live in a world where you have no power over fate, over your life, over your very body. This seems to be very much the world we're living in today. Like the Roman world faced by Epictetus, Cicero, and Seneca, it seems the only option left is to change the nature of our desire, of our hopes, because there are no means of changing the world. I hope this isn't the case, but as I look at the things mentioned in this diary, as I listen to the derision and condescension of the apologists, and as I witness the liberal-bashing of our elected officials, I find it difficult to escape this conclusion. Increasingly it feels as if the only thing to do is to wait for it all to fall apart so that we can begin to rebuild again from scratch. I am uncomfortably numb and filled with a deep and weary sadness borne of missed and squandered possibilities.