A few day ago I got an Email from Kos saying that dems should be playing offense, as in against Rand Paul in Kentucky.
Well, fine, I'll send the $10 - but I am not sure we are ready to use the truth in this and other fights.
Here's my rant:
Are we ready for some self reflection not just as progressives, but also as recently converted progressives?
Are we ready to admit that we have barely begun fixing the nation because of 30 years in which the nation was in decline and we didn't give a damn?
INCLUDING THE CLINTON YEARS, during six of which we didn't march against Gingrich "Contract on America"? Are we really ready to march against 6 more years of the Republicans with a Bohner that go on with "The Spaying and Neutering of America"?
Are we ready to admit that most democrats just let Reagenism reign instead of freedom, and ruin our economic system with Milton Friedman's unchecked rush towards deregulation and privatization, spurred by Ayn Rand's Objectivism, giving excuses to any billionaire or companies that can bend the law their way no matter what they do? We let government holds 50% of our debt (not China), so that a big chunk of the rest cost more and fills up the children's trust funds?
Are we ready to admit that 30 years after the ascent of Reaganism our education infrastructure is so broken that we have to import science teachers and engineers to fix our high schools, our roads, and now our high tech?
Are we ready to admit that we allowed our own kids to fail in science and math and were willing to pay for their tuition in business school, producing a glut of MBAs that are now clogging the system, including the health care system, with dangerous overhead bordering on corruption everywhere?
Are we willing to admit that after 30 years of Reagenism our health care is so broke that we need to import other nation's ideas AND nurses in order to stop being the only Western nation where life expectency is not increasing?
Are we ready to admit that we were all seduced by the Gordon Gekkos and dotcoms and real estate pyramid schemes believing that we can produce something out of nothing because we are Americans and we are not better Red then Dead and we are better than everyone else?
Are we ready to admit that our generation (Baby boomers and Gen Xers) has given up on our right to demonstrate and go to jail in order to achieve our goals after the 70's, and that for the first time in a generation we at last felt like we are willing to fight and die for our ideas in 2008 - and that we are not willing to give up on that just because a few billionaires own Fox News BS incorporated (that could only function because the fairness doctrine was cancelled) where the news is as fair and as balanced as the Afghanistan judiciary?
AND
Are we ready to admit that we were not ready to follow our leader a year ago when he suggested an all out approach that asked each and every one of us to go GREEN GREEN GREEN by buying new energy efficient windows, cutting our own carbon footprint, using our own reserves to invest in green technology, making the next "Apollo Project" our own green revolution, and bought SUVs with our cash for clunkers and huge home with the first time buyers credit instead?
Are we?
I recently wrote about the mosque in ground zero with a suggestion that angered many people here (I suggested Muslim Christians and Jews build one center so that the issue will go away). I may have been wrong, but I was thinking: Good responses!!! Where were we when Jewish cadets in the Air Force academy were forcibly converted a few years ago? Where were we when Evangelical politicians played the divisive issues the last 30 years? Its time to call their bluff, no?
If we will, then let us start with a mea culpa, and then admit that we have to borrow on our credit card not to buy luxury - but to build a national business out of (almost) nothing, because the Reaganists and the Randians bankrupted us. Then we can play offense without worrying about defense.