There is something that has been eating at me for a while now and the last week here has really pushed me to write something about it. I've been coming here for four years now so I feel I have proper perspective for what I have been feeling. I'm not a troll, I'm not interested in flame wars, and I don't pretend to know more than the next guy but I feel there is blatantly hypocritical conventional wisdom evolving here and it needs to be pointed out. DC media types are well documented to be highly beholden to flawed group-think CW that results from only living in their insulated little world and I guess I'm just worried that in the last year I've seen the same thing start to happen here.
- Obama is not delivering the change he promised because he has not pulled US forces out of Afghanistan where we are waging an immoral war.
Those who were paying attention to the hundreds of debates held before the election might recall that Obama routinely criticized Bush for neglecting Afghanistan in favor Iraq and promised to shift the military's focus accordingly. This strategy was even applauded here! Now of course some will say that the war is "un-winnable" and that al-qaeda is hiding in the Pakistan border we should go home. Meanwhile Obama and the military are in the process of deciding what the role of our forces there should be. What is evident is that the situation has not changed much since last fall nor has Obama's stance. Of course you can disagree with the operation but you are being dishonest if you try saying the president isn't doing what he pledged. I've been very happy with Obama so far aside from a couple things and think he has been a tremendous change. Not everyone here feels similarly and that's cool but it just feels like emotion overtook rationality on this issue long ago and if you feel the need to call me names or question my integrity because I don't agree with you, well SYFPH!
- These so-called moderate democrats in congress are simply are no better than republicans and simply triangulate for the middle in shameless attempts to keep getting re-elected while selling out their democratic ideals. And oh yeah, when those mindless tea-baggers undercut moderate republican candidates they are destroying the GOP
Listen, I know Lieberman is a lying, rotten to the core chode, but I'm not talking about him. I'm talking about the conventional wisdom that anytime a dem congressman says or does something that doesn't completely mesh with the left that they are a sell-out. Come on people, these folks, in addition to self-preservation, are charged with representing districts of constituents that may be completely different than yours or mine. Some represent conservative districts and I'd rather have their vote 50% of the time than R whose vote we'd get 0% of the time. We don't have to sacrifice our ideals or priorities here but we do need to be reasonable when judging democrats. We like to celebrate here the fact that we aren't mouth-breathing flat-earthers so lets start acting like it and use our critical thinking skills before we let our emotions get the best of us. A current example is the abortion amendment to the HCR bill. People proposing and supporting amendments like these are getting called all sorts of things the paranoid CW is quickly switching from claiming that supporters of this Stupak amendment are trying to kill HCR to "they hate women and always cow-tow to the right. I always thought the pro-choice mission was to keep abortion safe and legal, not safe safe, legal, and government subsidized and this is hardly a minority viewpoint. I know many here disagree but disagree respectfully instead of calling others HCR killing trolls or woman haters.
A sure fire way to ignite a fire way to ignite conspiracy theories here is to simply utter the name "Rahm Emmanuel". We all know he hates liberals and would stop at nothing to kill all progressive legislation. Sure the guy is a loose cannon of sorts but nothing could be further from the truth, he just works off a different strategy, one that helped achieve the congressional majorities we enjoy so again, lets chill before blowing collective stacks in his direction. I would like to add the caveat that "Blue Dogs" suck and are shameless attention whores and I think can go eff themselves gently with a chainsaw to paraphrase the movie "Heathers".
- But we have 60 senate votes, we can pass whatever legislation we want or just use reconciliation to pass anything with 51 votes
This is sort of another take on #2 but indulge me. Often times people forget that votes 59 and 60 are Lieberman and Arlen Specter who aren't even really democrats. But that's not what bugs me here. Yes I think we need to exploit our majorities because it may be a long time before the dems have this much power again but do we remember all the talk here of "minority rites" that we had back before 2006? I know how unethically republicans ran their majorities but when dems try to run the majorities while showing respect to the minority party so often they are lambasted on kos for being "bipartsian for bipartisanships sake". Just because repubs were so bad doesn't mean dems can be just as bad. We want good government remember?
I could actually go on with more points of how CW has gotten out of control but I think you get my point.
Sometimes I fear that any group of partisans (left or right) is ultimately hampered by overpowering cynicism, fear, distrust and resulting tendencies to be in full-on finger-pointing and complaining mode full time and that it's counter-productive. The Bush era did condition us to think more negatively than ever but we need to keep an era like that from ever occurring again. Threatening to stay home and not vote or to support only third party candidates shouldn't exactly be your first option every time you don't get everything you want as mememe pointed out. All I'm saying is that kossacks and liberals (I never cared much for the word "progressive" I always feel it was an attempt at re-branding that just acknowledges that conservatives had successfully destroyed the liberal label) in general have the advantage of being smarter and better educated in general than our conservative brethren as well as greater capacity for compassion and common decency so we should prove it. Lets not forget however that voters want politicians who believe in something and aren't afraid to fight for it.