I dedicate this diary to those of you who self righteously will need to attack me for writing. You will make my point better than I can ever.
Defeat can take many shapes. It can come in a blunt form swinging from behind a dark curtain, a surprise that shapes your personal and professional lives forever. It can start small much like the tinkle of a far away bell you wish to ignore and then it seems to grow in sound and intensity until that is all that everyone answers to. It can come as a vacuum, a silent empty reckoning of things foretold or wished that just never appear;a formerly lush landscape although unchanged that now is less vital, forgiving or beautiful. It can come in the form of a victory that is not fully understood, perhaps unearned and will not stand when tested.
For the republicans it came in the form of John McCain and Sarah Palin. They enthusiastically followed a well worn trail that was carved out by Richard Nixon but was expanded and paved by the likes of Ronald Reagan, the Bush Clan, Karl Rove clones and the moral midgets of the far christian right. The method was the same: break the natural unity of our nation into discrete and potentially angry segments, nationalist/moralist underdogs, who could continually feel cheated regardless if their party ran Washington or not. There were enemies and threats to their families and way of life everywhere in our nation and certainly outside our borders. The iconography continually attacked the government while working to secure the leadership to run it and feast on it.
Its three pillars became god, fear and lower taxes. Under of each of these pillars of the stool a number of our national moral weaknesses and shameful political tendencies could be revived and exploited to fire up "the base". Their fears and grievances at the nation were expandable as needed to win elections into a permanent Republican majority.
The irony of the McCain/Palin campaign was that by the time their turn came a real problem had reared its head and it wasn't Putin over Alaska. It was the monetary core that makes our unusual modern version of consumer/citizen work. It is the marketing of capitalism and consumption as the basic civic virtues writ large that began to stumble. It was the natural addition of globalization as a the eleventh commandment that maybe seemed a new false god. The financial machine took its cyclical natural form, ballooned out in to a speculative bubbles and reached like Icarus to that financial sun, melted and came crashing down.
The republicans were shocked about the fury of the final hours and their smooth running god, fear and lower taxes machine seemed woefully inadequate to address the scale of what was occurring world wide in the financial markets. The timing was right for a campaign run from a moral center that addressed that nation as a unified whole and allowed a rebalancing of our priorities.
Senator Obama's calm execution of a dignified and thoughtful campaign approached the future in a way that was inclusive of the best instincts of our nation and played to its higher aspirations in a way that was perfect for our times. It will define the post-baby boom era.
I am a baby boomer and my time to sign off has come. I came to DKOs looking for kindred spirits and found them in the sometimes thoughtful, witty, informed and analytical writings of many regular front pagers and in quirky writers who occasionally joined us here. I had my favorites that I read regularly and those who only wrote a couple times a month. I tried to contribute as I could but in the end only wrote when something really fired up the crusader in me.
I am leaving Dkos because I realized it may only have an ambitious political center set by its founder and not really any moral compass. I have seen many people I respect be bullied, hunted and silenced here. I have seen the front pagers and Kos remain silent and set no basic standard for discourse.
As much as we complain about Wall Street and the need for regulation we need to acknowledge that even a market place for ideas requires respect, tolerance and some basic standards beyond HTML coding and avoiding lawsuits. I found that lacking here and as a result will no longer be writing here.
I am like a tiny aging canary dying off in one vein of a deep progressive movement mine that needs to avoid the tendencies to justify mob violence in any form in order to win. DKOS did not follow Obama's high standards of respect for all despite the great effort to support him and other candidates in the national political system. It was a tarnished victory for this site. Win like Obama and you will feel better the morning after.
If you can get President Obama to diary here again then maybe you will have achieved what can be your ultimate purpose: to help create a viable progressive movement that lifts the democratic party and makes it the vehicle to achieve the greatest dreams of our republic.
Till then, I wish you the very best,
GinaNY