Crossly Posted from Docudharma
How do you address the fact that The Democratic Congress has utterly failed us, the American People and The World....
On a blog dedicated to electing Democrats?
And by extension.....to supporting them?
Especially with a party apparatchik running around trying to whip people back into line?
Here is our problem....and to diffuse any suspense, I do NOT have a solution.
The Republicans are bent on creating SOME VERSION of a fascist state, using as their necessary enemy/villain/mannequin....Islamo < gasp > Fascists!!! (BURKAS!) Our only ray of hope is that they are just too fucking stupid to be as effective as the Nazis or Mussolini were.
The Democrats.....ah The Democrats!
Our true and shining saviors, the good guys, the folks who talked about how bad Bush was...sorta...before the last elections, but now have been revealed to be totally powerless or unwilling or incompetent (your choice!) to actually OPPOSE him. As one might expect from an ...opposition party.
I won't bother to run through all of the times they have done incredibly stupid things or used bad strategy or tactics or just completely caved, we all know enough to be thoroughly disgusted at this point.
The Usual Suspects point out that not ALL the Democrats are handing the reins of fascism hand over fist to the Republicans and Bushco as fast as they possibly can. It is just a MINORITY of Democrats who are willing to accommodate and abet turning America into a fascist state....well a minority,plus the Leadership....and thus we should NOT speak ill of them....or oppose their non-opposition. Criticizing or giving up on the Democrats after this INCREDIBLY bad run they have been on is...bad.....somehow. They will get better if we just leave them be to give away America as we know it. AND we got minimum wage!!!! (and all we had to do was give Bussh 90 billion dollars to kill Iraqis to get it!)
What we should do, they say is work on our local level to change the Democrats....the solution to fighting a fascist state is to infiltrate the Democratic Party and spend the next twenty years rising to power in the Party structure and THEN we can have .....actual Democrats. Instead of fascist enablers.
Well that is all well and good...it is a valid strategy after all.....IF The current batch of Democrats wasn't INCREASINGLY handing the keys to our democratic form of government and our Constitutional Rights to the Republican fascist lite regime....Right Now.
Long term strategy is great.
If you have a long term.
Which we don't.
It is not just the specifics of how they are spelunking our country away. That is bad enough.
But at each fork in the road where a decision can be made about what this country is, they are handing The Balance Of Power to the Republican Totalitarians. They are ceding The Battle Of Ideas over what this country is and is supposed to be. They are accepting, granting, and even embracing the Idea of America as a fascist state.
We are...as these things are measured.....still relatively high up on the slippery slope. But it is not called a slippery slope for no reason....we are steadily sliding downward.
It is now The Accepted Reality that America starts and wages aggressive wars, It is now The Accepted Reality that America tortures, It is now The Accepted Reality that America spies on its own citizens, It is now The Accepted Reality that government officials are not subject to the rule of law. Even if found guilty, they are pardoned.
This IS what America is now. This IS what America stands for.
Because the Democrats have not stopped these things. Because they have not used whatever drastic and extreme powers of legislation, prosecution, obstruction and public relations at their disposal to stop them.
These are ALL Republican Ideas. But the Republicans are brainless idiots who have no clue that they are creating a fascist state. They are to stupid to see past there own ideology and loyalty to their party to even really CARE what they are doing, as long as the can defeat the Dems and get them to cave it doesn't matter what the result is. They are happy to introduce fascism to the country....just to make the Dems look bad. They are too stupid to face the fact that they have started a juggernaut of injustice and totalitarianist policies that are destroying everything America is supposed to be. They are almost reflexively instituting fascism. Creating their reality faster than even they can react to it. Or reflect on what reality they are truly creating.
But these things only truly become reality when the Democrats do not do EVERYTHING in their power to stop them. And they haven't. They have instead embraced the notion that they are powerless until '09....and then a Golden Age can begin.
Pelosi's recent interview is just shameful. Hold them accountable indeed.
By giving them everything they want every time they ask for it....accountability.
Right.
I said at the beginning here that I have no solutions. That is not strictly true. I have no solutions that will work without the Democrats leading on those solutions.
The list of solutions itself is fairly clearcut.
Do NOT bring Republican legislation to the floor, make the Repubs use parliamentary procedure.
Make the Repubs actually filibuster.
Obstruct, obstruct obstruct...even if it means closing down the government.
Arrest and prosecute those who are defying subpoenas.
Cut off funding the war.
Bring articles of Impeachment to the floor, successful or not.
And finally.....go on the frikkin television and tell the American People what is happening and ask for their help in stopping it.
Iow....OPPOSE.
But they will not oppose.
Because they are afraid to be called Soft On Terror, or Unpatriotic, or Cowards.
Well, Congressional Democrats.....YOU ARE Soft On Terror, and Unpatriotic, and Cowards. Because you have become accomplices to Bushco....who is all of those things and more. Of course....you don't CARE when your base says that to you, do you? You only care when Fox news or Dick Cheney says it. Not US.
All that it takes is for good people to do nothing.
And they can't even do nothing.
They are actually HELPING the evil that is Bushco.
What are we going to do about the Democrats?
We simply CAN'T not vote for them, then the REAL fascists win. Not voting is NOT a protest...it is only a way to become another ignored entity in the process. All the politicians care about is winning with those who DO vote. They don't pay ANY attention to those who don't vote. Not voting is not a protest, it is just giving up on the process....they DON'T CARE if you don't vote.
We can do what we can to dry up their coffers by not contributing, but part of the problem is the vast amounts of money they get from K Street and corporations.
We CAN March. And keep Marching
We CAN Protest. And keep Protesting
We can STRIKE!And keep Striking.
We CAN try to make them more scared of us than they are of 'them.'
We COULD flood their offices with phone calls e-mails and faxes. But I learned through all of my attempts at that with impeachment that too few people actually DO that. It would take thousands of calls a day to actually affect anything and we don't seem to have the collective will to do that.....or do we?
If the 2000 active Kossaks and Dharmaniacs....and the thousands of more lurkers reading right now ACTUALLY WENT TO THEIR PHONES AND CALLED PELOSI and their own Congressmember RIGHT NOW and every day....it could make a difference.
If we actually JOINED TOGETHER to call them or fax them to say, I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore...it WOULD have an effect. Especially if we did it every day.
It might not work....
But it WOULD have an effect.
It MIGHT make them just a little bit MORE scared of us...and a little less scared of them.
And that, my fine friends, is what we are down to.
If we want to stop the madness....including attacking Iran, we....YOU actually have to DO something about it.
I don't know what to do about the Democrats. This is the best I can come up with. But I can guarantee you this....thousands of calls and faxes a day WILL make a difference. IF we do it together.
ALL of us doing it together will make a difference.
ALL of us uniting in the same effort will make a difference.
In point of fact....the only thing that has a CHANCE to make a difference is US....ALL of us...joining together as one voice and yelling the same message.
If the phone is busy, send a fax, if the phone and fax are both busy send an e-mail....but keep calling.
Think about it ...please....if thousands of people a day actually called and said the famous line "I Am Mad As Hell And I Am NOT Going To Take This Anymore," it will have an impact. It's not much of an idea...as I said, I have no solutions....but it is SOMETHING, some kind of direct action.
We have to make them care, we have to scare them.
Or we slide farther and ever faster down that slippery slope.
It's up to each one of us...it's up to YOU.
Take back America, while their is still something left of it.
One thing is now CERTAIN.....The Democrats aren't going to save us. It is up to We The People to save ourselves. And we can only do that by uniting in action. Even an action as small as a telephone call. The RW Fascists Lite count on US to be just as craven and ineffectual as The Democrats.
Let's prove them wrong. Because I for one....Am as mad as hell and I am not going to take this anymore.
Call YOUR Congessmember: Toll Free Contact Congress! 1-800-828-0498
Call The Speaker:
Office of the Speaker
H-232, US Capitol
Washington, DC 20515
202-225-0100
FAX 202-225-8259
E-mail