Although this is not across the board, I'm blown away by the pervasiveness of many Kossak's acceptance of the latest RW talking points and LW irrationalities. Maybe it's my age, maybe it's discouragement that's taken over (again, dammitall). It bothers me enough that I get into flame wars in threads that are weighed down by those talking points and ill-conceived memes.
I often wonder why logic and common sense are in such short supply. I wonder if progressives are able to move out of perpetual victimization and the familiarity of hating the people in power no matter who they are. I wonder if paranoia is an infectious disease that can't be combated here because it's so much fun to rant and blame and jump on whatever bandwagon is currently running through the wreck list.
All it takes is one diarist trotting out the nonsense of the day, rumors that have no basis in reality, or rage about something that hasn't yet occurred and DKos is is a vast wasteland for at least a day - too often it's longer.
Who wins when progressives buy into the Corporate Running Dog Capitalist Pigs meme? The Capitalist Pigs! It almost always ends up filling people with hopelessness, which means we don't show up to vote, we don't write respectful letters to our representatives, we quit talking about our Democratic values to people we could influence. We're less enthused about working for Dem candidates, because what's the point, really?
Who wins when our president is presented as a wimp, an incompetent, a tool of Wall Street? The Republicans! No wonder they're paying people to spread that nonsense throughout the left - they win, and we return to being ineffective railers against the crap that rolls out of Republican-controlled Washington. IS that all we're good at? Are we the joke Sarah Palin claims we are? Are we losers sitting in our parent's basements fussing and whining? I didn't think so during the election. The energy here was palpable, the excitement was infectious. The primary fights were pretty vicious, but at least people were fighting for progressive values and whooping troll ass. Now we seem to be so insecure and ineffective that we jump on troll bandwagons.
What is it? Is it fear of being powerful? Is it unwillingness to take the risks of being in power? Do we need to be right so desperately that we emulate members of Congress (who we hate BTW) in their ineffectiveness and inability to lead or to take chances, to fight for Democratic initiatives and be proud of liberal values? It often looks that way to me. If we're fighting we'll lose sometimes, and we'll be wrong sometimes. Tough shit.
Why exercise our power when we can roll over and quit because Rahm Emanuel is the Devil's handmaiden and the DLC too powerful to fight? Why support our President when we can return to the safe mode of mistrust and victimization? Why stand up when it's so easy to whine? Why think things through when raw emotion is so satisfying? Just because it accomplishes nothing is no reason not to run with it, right? We've done it for so long we can do it without having to wake up and think.
I keep trying to ask hard questions because politics and democracy are not easy, we have to stretch ourselves and be willing to admit that there are gray areas, that some of the Conservadems make good points about how elements of HCR will harm their constituents. We scream about how stupid "clean coal" is (and rightly so) but leave out the very real fears of the Reps who know that people in their states will starve without mining. We forget that what's here, what's real, has to be dealt with. What are we offering states that depend on coal mining or oil refining or chemical plants for a large portion of their jobs? What are we offering the people who work in the health insurance industry? How do we keep people employed if we shut down the only sector of our economy that's adding jobs?
I'm not saying that we should give up on HCR, or cleaning up the environment. I'm not saying that we should roll over and live with the status quo.
I'm saying we need to consider the realities of all these initiatives and come up with realistic solutions for the problems they bring with them. The fact is that we've avoided dealing with our problems for so long that we've got deeply entrenched wrongs that need care, time and patience to right. It's not simple. If we can't live with complexity, why expect ordinary citizens to take it on?
One of the most popular reasons for denigrating the Obama administration is that Obama is complicit in war crimes because he's not prosecuting the Bush administration.
I have a challenge for all of you who demand that Dick Cheney and George Bush and their minions be prosecuted for war crimes. Think this through. Dick Cheney has been breaking laws and ignoring the Constitution since Nixon was in charge. He's gotten away with criminal actions repeatedly He and his ilk do a tremendous amount of damage to our country with few consequences. I'd love to see him in black and white stripes workin' on the chain gang. What I really don't want to see is a trial where there's not enough solid evidence to convict a former head of state. I really don't want to be here when Cheney and Bush are found not guilty because there's no way to tie them solidly to the crimes they committed. I don't want to be here when the RW media trumpet this win and spend months selling the American public lies about Democrats seeking political gain by going on a witch hunt. And that lie will sell. A finding of innocence, even though they're guilty as hell, will satisfy the majority of citizens that Bush and Cheney are victims of an evil left wing conspiracy. The result will be that we're in the shitcan for a long time.
I ask you, do you seriously think Cheney has left a solid paper trail that will connect him to his crimes? Haven't you already seen that he has people who will take the rap for him? Don't you get it that he's damn good at this shit? Do you really want to play on his turf, lose, and pay for that loss for a couple of decades? What's emotionally satisfying isn't the point here. What's legal and right, good for democracy and our reputation around the world, morally imperative may not be possible. That's a bitch, but our best defense here may be to ensure that the neo-cons are kept out of power for a good long time, long enough for them to become so discouraged they crumble. These are people who only thrive on power. Starve them long enough and they'll turn somewhere else. It's not enough, but life isn't fair and demanding that it become fair won't change a thing.
I hope and pray that Obama and Holder only proceed with war crimes prosecutions if they can damn near guarantee convictions. They aren't going to get that kind of evidence by transcribing Cheney on Fox. It won't take a few months - it's more likely to take a few years. Take a deep breath and think about reality. Is your personal satisfaction really worth putting the Republicans back in power so they can continue to undermine this country?
What about DADT and DOMA, marriage equality, civil rights for this particular band of minority citizens? Executive Orders aren't lasting change. Rights for LBGTs can't be forced onto a country that's proven time and again to be vulnerable to Christianist influence. It may take a few more years of educating your friends and neighbors, it may take time to collect enough rational people to overcome the fears of the uneducated and those vulnerable to fear-mongering.
When gays are out of the closet they have tremendous influence on small segments of the population, people who work with them and live with them, worship with them, attend PTA meetings with them. It doesn't happen quickly, though, and the opposition is well-funded, well-organized, and louder than the proponents of equal rights have been so far. Our message only changed recently to a call for civil rights, a call for human rights. That framing has to take root in the culture before we can expect to overpower the haters. Civil rights for people of color took generations to accomplish, and it's still incomplete. Equal rights for women has been in the works for generations, and is still incomplete.
Change is hard, it's slow, and it's incredibly frustrating that that's the truth, but if we can't accept that and learn to work inside reality we'll need to accept ultimate responsibility for delaying the progress we hunger for. If we can't have discussions about these hard realities without name-calling and personal attacks we're turning off the people we need if we're going to succeed. I've been accused of homophobia often enough that I've just about lost interest in being an activist for GLBT rights. I have my own unfinished business - I'll spend my energy on equal pay for equal work, equal representation in business and in politics. I'm a woman who's lived with sexism for 60 years. I have a mental illness that has prevented me from keeping jobs with benefits, a decent salary, and some kind of security. That's something I'd like to change, and it's personally powerful. I have GLBT friends and I'm often outraged by what they have to deal with, but my money is limited and my energy isn't what it used to be. And quite frankly, I've lived through the same exact struggles as a woman. I've lost patience with the people who are convinced they're particularly victimized - all minorities face the same bullshit. If we can't work together to change a sick culture because we're invested in being the most discriminated against we're going to delay progress for everyone. That's sad.
Why did we blow all our energy fighting the bill coming from the Senate Finance Committee, a bill that was fucking guaranteed to be lousy? Why such short-term thinking? It wasn't even The HCR Bill, it was one of many coming from many committees. Why did we spend weeks in a frenzy about something we weren't going to change when what we needed to do was support the good bills, to encourage the people who were actually interested in solid reforms? It appears that all we have left after that blowout is discouragement and hopelessness. We should have been activists when there were real bills to be voted on. We needed to push hard to get the better House Bill passed, but it appears we're stuck in whine mode and outrage.
There's more. There's Wall Street, and too big to fail, and the near impossibility of getting the deregulation genie back in the damn bottle. There's SCOTUS sold out to corporate interests, and the incredible amount of power that walks hand in hand with incredible amounts of money. There's trade agreements, and a global economy based primarily in greed and self-interest. There's war, and what we owe other countries. There's a very real threat of becoming the largest 3rd world nation of all because we've lost our interest in creating and innovating. There's the idiocy of buying Tax Cuts as the solution to problems that require that we invest in each other and in our country as a whole.
So what do we accomplish when we are content with railing against the corporatocracy? Not a damn thing. Why aren't we taking action? Why do we still have credit cards? Why do we bank with BoA and Wells Fargo? Why do we shop at Mall*Wart, deluded into thinking we're saving money? How many of us are saving for a solar cell conversion, or creating water catchment systems? How many of us are active in our communities pushing for water conservation and landscaping with native plants? How many of us live with grass lawns? How many of us are insisting that our local businesses get serious about energy conservation? How many of us actually support our local businesses, or the people who are eking out a bare existence on organic farms?
How many of us are pushing our states to support green industries? How many of us are lobbying our local governments to provide incentives for those who use solar power? How many of us are willing to pay extra taxes for infrastructure that supports clean energy? Germany has benefitted from American businesses building solar cell factories in their country. You know why they're building there? Because Germany has created infrastructure for solar power, and incentives for citizens and businesses that install solar technology. Why create jobs here only to lose them because there isn't a market for what you're building?
Why do we permit the incredible damage being done by the many who choose to live inside the bubble of their own tiny interest group? We're letting ourselves become so fragmented by our personal interests and demands that we're in grave danger of losing the power we need to wield if we're going to effect change. Obama is a community organizer, and he told us that change happens from the ground up. Why don't we start locally, and quit whining because he hasn't changed everything from the top down? In a year.
I know that a lot of people here are doing all of these things, and I'm grateful for that. I know that there are groups working hard to change business as usual, and I'm grateful for what they accomplish.
I also suspect that there are a lot of people here who are passive complainers, and I'm challenging you to get off your asses and get busy with what can be done by ordinary citizens.