Democrats, you gotta love em. Sometimes I think we will intellectualize ourselves right out of existence. I see comments to run a primary opponent against President Obama, people are not happy because a position of theirs is not being given top billing. Then you have comments about how great President Obama is, basically because he is getting something done and is not Bush or McCain. Apparently the fact that Obama is a pragmatist is not enough; he needs to be an almost revolutionary or mythic figure to make people happy. So the real problem is how do you make everyone happy?
Answer - you don’t and you never will. When I was in the Navy a Chief Petty Officer once told me that if you men are mad at you 50% of the time and your superiors are mad at you the other 50% – you are doing a good job. If the President could do it all by himself this would be a dictatorship not a democracy. So to be angry at him you have to assume that all the things he has compromised on he did because he wanted to and not because he was forced to by democrats that cannot seem to agree on a position. Worse some democrats (gasp) are pandering to corporate donors who shell out the big bucks to get them re-elected. Fact – until we get corporate money out of election politics we will continue to have this problem. Actually we need to get all private money out of politics but that is another post.
So is having educated and passionate democrats a problem? No, for the most part; but it does make it hard when the conversations between democrats start sounding like me arguing with a Rush republican – the substance of the argument devolves quickly. Strangely the source of our greatest power is also our greatest liability, we believe passionately that we are right and any deviation from that is wrong. Problem is that position is doomed to failure; we never will or should get everything we want. That will lead to complacency and the feeling we are right and always will be.
A wonderful book by Studs Terkel called Hope Dies Last has an interview with Arlo Guthrie. From this interview a passage always sticks in my mind; in it Guthrie says he knew the revolution of the 60’s was over when he saw signs that were not just "End the Vietnam War" but were now saying "Plumbers Union Against the War in Vietnam." He knew that once you added this layer of complexity to the fight by including a personal (or group) agenda to it, you water it down making it less effective. But once another group did something the Plumbers Union didn't like they would quit to go find people who were more inline with their agenda; even if those people did not want to end the war.
Descartes got it wrong, it should have been: I think therefore I am – miserable.
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Personal Note: I have been away for quite awhile, sorry for that - lots of life to work on.