I wanted to pay a visit to Nightprowlkitty. I miss her feedback. Many times I have said that on average 50% of what you know is due to what you have read and the other 50% results from what you have felt. Nightprowlkitty has a lot of this last 50% and, speaking from her heart, reaches many more people than me. This is my pale attempt to complement her 50%.
This is my comment to your entry http://www.dailykos.com/...
- I may not agree 100% with Obama, and Nightprowlkitty mentions the issue of torture as a example of a disagreement that I share, but I see that most of those same people who criticize him have not made their homework. As I posted in my entry "21st Century Democrats. A step to the short-term. A possible step to a long-term turning point" (http://www.dailykos.com/...) and, specifically with respect to immigration, in my entry "Betraying Hector Perez Garcia or the FIRM’s extraordinary service to the xenophobic Right" (http://www.dailykos.com/...), the far Right has been dominating for decades the debate, defining the issues and deciding the terms of the discussion. Since the mid 70s disciplined of Far Right religious bigots took over the notion of Christendom, extracted isolated parts of the Bible with respect to homosexuality and abortion, absorbed in the exchange with the Republican party some other talking points from the Right (like the disregard for the environment, the weakening of public education, a blindly pro-Israel bully position, the weakening of the federal jurisdiction and low taxation). On immigration, most people believe in line-jumpers of non-existent lines, in economic myths resulting from phony studies and in the irrelevance of the debate about the morality of the immigration law despite its abiding to a criterion of caste, despite the many examples of immoral laws like the Jim Crow and despite the fact that Alexander Hamilton, our most important immigrant, would have found almost impossible to come legally with the present immigration law. The economic debate was limited to taxation, our counterinsurgency strategy to the number of troops in Iraq, our support for the troops to KBR’s income flow, and our debate about values was reduced to two issues: gay marriage and abortion. Whopper after whopper, everyone of them was allowed to pass by an uninformed left. With appealing slogans, the Right found its better allies in weird demonstrations (Jon Stewart once said of the Pink Mothers: "You’re not f***ing helping" and he was right) and in the dancing marches of the Mexican flags. Thus, liberals were ridiculed and cornered out of the mainstream. The Democratic Party preferred to accommodate to its failure instead of trying to regain the mainstream and when you expected the least, even accounting books were talking about the "death tax". Thus, Emmanuel supported Heath Shuler and sent immigration to a limbo despite Shuler’s vote not making any difference in the House.
Had the Democratic Party sponsored liberal points of view to debate and win the mainstream for good during the Bush administration, as the Religious Right did it for worse in the 70s, Obama could have been a turning point for good today as Reagan was for worse in 1980. I don’t say that Obama cannot be that turning point any more but indeed he faces a serious disadvantage with respect to Reagan as the Right prepared the conditions on the ground for Reagan much better than the Democrats have prepared them for Obama. At the light of the poor effort made by many liberals and especially by the Democratic Party, we just have to cross our fingers.
Even Roosevelt had to drop racial integration to count with enough votes to pass the New Deal. Let’s hope Obama doesn’t have to face such dilemmas (and I am thinking about immigration reform and the Employee Free Choice Act).
- As I have said before, about 50% of what you know results from what you have read but the other 50% comes from what you have felt. That is why I wrote "You have blood on your hands" (http://www.dailykos.com/...), and that’s why I use many times sarcastic language (actually most of the time), and that’s why I lost my patience with Scpato when I answered his attacks in "Scpato’s angry numbers. Sloppy research or poorly hidden prejudice? (http://www.dailykos.com/...) letting him show everybody how those who feel comfortable persecuting the defenseless react when they find somebody who expose their real intentions, and that’s why I have decried those who swear they are liberals because they are on the losing end of the conservative status quo but that they even demand having a minority in the losing end of a new status quo of their like.
Yes, Nightprowlkitty, what is in you heart is very important. You know that even the Aryan Nation has its own Christian Church and its own interpretation of the Bible in which Jesus was Aryan and racist? How many liberals have even given a thought to the 15 hundred Indian farmers who have committed suicide because they have been overwhelmed by their debts?
- Is the problem at the left or at the right? Many at the left have not learned from Chicago, 1968. They swear that everybody will bow or will have to bow to their demonstrations, and so could end up involuntarily helping another Nixon? They could call Obama "Bush in disguise" but the truth is that if they had made their homework, the Republican right would not have dominated the debate with empty slogans for decades. On the side of the Republican party, unfortunately McCain made the greatest possible favor to the extreme Right, taking the loss resulting from the post-Bush elections and leaving headless the moderate sector of the Republican party that now can’t find enough strength to find an identity to resist the Limbaughs, the Gingrichs and the Palins. I wrote about this in "And the prize for naivety is..." (http://www.dailykos.com/...). Part 5. Until the Republican party does not form a moderate wing, bipartisanship is a fool’s trap. Republicans know that what Obama can’t get done at the beginning of his mandate, he won’t be able to retake until the beginning of his second period, if the economy rebounds, and that’s why they will do everything in their power to prevent Obama from succeeding and to put off his reforms. Beating the Republicans in 2010 good be excellent but the damage to the economy is so deep that it is difficult that Obama can get results that soon. I have written about this in "It was time" (http://www.dailykos.com/...) and "The best act of ventriloquism of these times" (http://www.dailykos.com/...).
Thus, I believe we could be in a turning point. In turning points people question their beliefs. Turning points are traumatic and can be an opportunity for worse, like the manipulation of 9/11 by the Bush administration, or for better, like the doubts generated about the self-evident "truths" of the Right about the economy as a result of this economic crisis. About the opportunities brought by this kind of traumatic turning points, you can see "The anti-war movement. A lost opportunity to debate our counter subversive strategy" (http://www.dailykos.com/...).
- You say "What the most vulnerable in our society have always known trickled up, as it were, and invaded the middle class, forced us to see our dreams of our own importance had somehow blinded us to the need to be united as an informed and active citizenry." It’s important that we take the "informed and active citizenry" part seriously. In every front, liberals have lazily felt comfortable exchanging slogans with the Right. While the Right feels comfortable putting make-up to their prejudices with empty slogans, being a liberal is not that easy because it takes hard work to be informed and to share that information with people who have unfortunately get used to the easy slogans and the 30" TV spots. In this last battlefield liberals will always find difficult to win. They have to pull the debate to their own field. They have to make every resident to take pride in being well informed.
Nightprowlkitty, you are not deluded. Liberals just have to get a good strategy. Part of that strategy is to take the terms of the debate back.
- You say "Have you ever noticed it's usually the good guys who tend to take responsibility when something goes wrong, even if it wasn't their doing? They take the wrongs done to heart, feel it deeply, and are driven to help make things better."
I remember that, when the tobacco industry tried to retaliate against whistle-blowers, there where groups who tried to help those whistle-blowers get their lives back on track. Nowadays, from the Enron scandal to the recent financial debacle, whistle-blowers have been completely vulnerable, on their own, and thus, easily silenced and expelled by dirty executives at the top of the financial market. Believe me. I have painful experiences and scars of that kind.
Have I used this entry to hang my little seen section to yours seeking more viewers and that’s why I have plagued it with links to my previous entries? With shame I must admit that I have. My entries are read by very few people. That’s why I had to post a cute dog to attract some more readers. Nevertheless, with that same sincerity, I must say that I miss your commentaries now and then, when you have some time for my tedious entries. I also hope your kitty can be friends with the dog I posted in "The Tea Douche-bag parody and Mason’s curious reporting on the economy" (http://www.dailykos.com/...).
Alfredo M. Bravo de Rueda E.