If the Bush administration had been competent, the half-vast right wing conspiracy might have succeeded.
That they were undone by their own short sighted greed and egotism is all that has saved us. Iraq and Afghanistan were just too lucrative for the military industrial complex to pass up. We won both wars in a matter of weeks and then remained stuck in the middle east for ten years like Brer Rabbit with his fist in the Tar Baby.
We were on the verge of bankruptcy when the Democrats obligingly stepped in to take the blame. We thought it was a victory but it was a pyrrhic victory.
We can't blame Obama for failing to anticipate that the right wing would default on their allegiance to the United States and betray America by refusing to uphold their obligations to democracy, choosing instead political partisanship. They have recaptured some power by sacrificing the political integrity of organic conservatives in favor of an artificial construct which they think they own because they paid for it, but they are badly mistaken. The Tea Baggers represent the radical frenzy of reactionary thinking. The Republican party is in the thrall of the asylum inmates.
Obviously conservatives hurt too, perhaps more than we do if we are to judge them by their outrageous rhetoric. In turn, we hold them in contempt for their pain and hate them back. This is not a recipe for co-operation or for progress.
The populace will not pull apart at the center, the unmanageable right will break off and power will go to the middle. That's where the money will move. The center will become sacrosanct and what's to the left of that will be isolated.
What does it mean to be a Progressive? Are we some special clique to be set apart from our fellow Americans? Shall we hold ourselves aloof in disdain for their foolishness and desperation?
The essence of self defense is, what self are you defending? Progressivism was never a far left movement. To identify it as such is a mistake. There is much leftist thought that has been kept out of the political dialogue for too long and we do it a mis-service if we do not help to implement it. But we cannot fool ourselves into believing that we can shove it down people's throats any more than the radical right can impose their own agenda.
I believe it is possible for good people to help each other despite their differences in approach. I believe that government is the tool that can effect such change but we must think holistically and inclusively. We cannot smugly ignore prepackaged talking points but must offer the opposition something they find worth while to replace them with, and to do that we must position ourselves above the fray, taking the high ground of morality that has been abandoned and showing them how we can all occupy it at the same time.
The preamble to the Constitution is only one sentence. It lists six reasons for our existence as a political entity. The fifth is "promote the general welfare," yet conservatives insist we're not a welfare state. Welfare in the dictionary is, "good fortune, well being and prosperity." This is what the far right would have us deny.
Capitalism never was a philosophy for living, it's an economic theory, so is Socialism. While the making and getting of things is intrinsic to civilization, it is not what life is about.
Progressives don't need advertising we need a new narrative, a story to tell, a tale that raises the hair on your head like your brain was on fire. The right has a name brand and the left is scrawling on the wall with crayons. Democrats don't just have a message problem, they have a messenger problem. The herald is hoarse with shouting slogans and his trumpet is full of spit.
The founder of Kos, Markos Moulitsas, used to be a Republican. Think about it.