Reading the comments on icebergslim's diary was like taking a bath in toxic waste. I felt that awful after absorbing one dose after another of rage, despair, and self-defeating rhetoric.
It's not that I don't think people are entitled to their disappointment, or that they shouldn't be pushing for more. It just seems more and more that when something bad happens in the political realm, or something even seems to happen (an important distinction), the response gets amplilfied on this site into a shit-storm of despair.
People lose hope, join the echo-chambers chorus of despair, the center does not hold, the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity. Folks, this is how we hamstring ourselves, turn ourselves into a bitter fringe. This is not how we reverse the setbacks we hate.
All the venting in the world will only provide you with temporary relief. Early in life, I was faced with a situation where I faced constant harrassment from my peers. Over that time, I learned that as much as I would rage against them, hit them back when they hit me, get tough with them, that wouldn't change my situation, or make my opponents respect me.
In fact, it taught me that if people don't really respect you, you can do practically fuck-all to convince them otherwise. I learned to live life to follow my own bliss, to seek out the satisfaction of my own interests, to reflect my own beliefs, and fuck those who thought I didn't have a right to do that. I didn't wait for the rest of society to validate who or what I was. I created within me a core that acted for its own reasons, with its own purposes in mind.
And then came the last decade. Before I could just be content to be an island, then I felt, with the things I knew about Bush policies, which nobody knew, I felt I had to be a voice for that knowledge. I felt if I just gave that voice out, the facts alone would bring people to their senses. I didn't count on just how fucked-up the Bush Administration got people with its scare-tactics, it's Swiftboat bullshit.
Getting Democrats elected wasn't just about winning the debates on facts, it was about creating the emotional prerequisites of a vote for our leader.
If you seriously think somebody setting the record straight will win this election, you're kidding yourself. The people who have power want to keep it, and they will go to any lengths of bullshit to make sure it remains protected.
But bullshit can't save bad leaders forever, just long enough that they do some damage. When it became apparent what re-electing Bush and the Republicans in Congress meant, people kicked them out in the historic 2006 election. Now, whatever you think about our current position, understand this: they have not succeeded in recovering from that defeat since. They once held the Presidency, the House and Senate together. It drives them nuts that they've lost it.
2008 drove them even more nuts. Nothing they've said since 2008 is much new, it's the same old accusations. 2008 is as low as they have gotten since before 1994. Interesting how they set up 2010 the way they did, the compromises, the losses, the talk about taxes and overregulation. It didn't matter then what was true, nor does it matter now. If anybody thinks that simply setting the record straight, getting tough with the Republicans, or anything else guarantees victory, they're kidding themselves.
There has to be another element. What we had in 2006 and 2008, and what we've deprived of ourselves since is the will to move as a movement, to go out there and gain supporters. Confronted by the Republican's ostracizing, withering harrassment, we've retreated to our corner as the bullied, misunderstood creatures they've had us for decades. We let them redefine ourselves and our leaders right back into passiveness, despair, and apathy.
Which is fine for them. If we stay home, they get to visit all the people we won't even bother with. If we become cynical and lash out at Americans and centrists who don't fully buy our political positions, the Republicans are just fine coming to their door to spread their message instead. If we don't vote, there are quite a few Republicans who will in our stead, and our silence will be tacit consent to the government that comes of what they create.
What can I tell you? You will have to vote for imperfect candidates. You will have to hold your nose on some votes. You will have to sell candidates who disappoint you. You will have to stomach compromises and idiotic politics that you hate. But if you let that drive you off, the Republicans will fill the void you leave, and exercise the power you won't. Simple as that. You cannot simply slip in and out of politics as a ghost, and expect people to treat you as anything more than a will' o' the wisp.
Want better? You have to involve yourself in the system, compete for the positions of power. You want to change things more than they change you, you will have to be observant about where the corruption has seepped in, and work what you can to change things. Difficulty and complication will be your reward for some time.
But un-fucking up this country needs to be done. You won't do it by cursing the President, building up ill-will against him. It's not the Democrats who need to be shown the door here, at least not first. If we wish to replace people in government, why don't we start first with those who oppose us so fervently? Why are we wasting our strength on our own?
Simply think of it in this way: if the Republicans in Congress fall, and Obama stays, we benefit, at the very least get back control of the agenda and the ability to pass some things. Who knows, it might just be the last nail in the coffin of the Conservative movement.
If Obama falls, and the Republicans lose Congress, then we have a veto pen waiting for every major bill we want to pass, and we have that Republican scumbag deciding how this nation's laws and regulations will be carried out.
If Obama falls, and the Republicans keep Congress, then at best we have the Senate, and at worst we have things right back where they were in 2004.
The Republicans in Congress must fall, and Obama must remain President if we want to go anywhere in the next four years. It's that simple. It breaks my heart people don't realize how simple the whole thing is, with the obstinate, obstructive Republicans in Congress.
If you want to defeat the Republicans, organize to defeat the Republicans. Stop working against one of the key figures we'll need to pass our agenda in the next four years, and start working against the Republicans in Congres who have been deliberately hamstringing him, and who now starve him of any progressive legislation to sign and worse.
Think of it another way: If Republicans can claim a mandate from getting one-half of one branch of government, what do you think we get when we get it all back? I know some will say that Republicans might--
Fuck that. Who gives a shit what they might say? Giving a shit what they might say is your first step towards letting them control the framing you employ. Push your own message, and let them respond like they will. We wonder about the Republican's strength, and one part of it is that they don't give as much of a fuck about avoiding our scorn as we do theirs. Sometimes it's not enough to earn something, and expect it to be given. Sometimes you have to walk out there and take it like it's yours.
I don't see that here. I see people who have been cowed into believing that corporations and Republicans run things, that they have the upper hand. Sometimes believing that willpower can get you what you want is solipsism, but sometimes, as with politics, willpower can be the defining difference between those who have formal control, and those who have real control of things.
I love Obama, I really do, but whether he rises or falls, I regard him as an instrument of the politics I want, not as the object of those policies. I have no illusions that electing him has automatically ushered in some sort of golden age for Democrats. This is only the beginning of a long, hard fight, and my feeling is that Obama has had to take on far too much alone, with a whole segment of our government dead set against him.
But they're not dead set against him for his sake, they're opposing him to oppose us, and whatever potential movement we might create. They do not want us as rivals for their power. They do not want us to win, at any costs. Giving up on Obama, you might win for yourself the contentment of no longer supporting somebody you consider unworthy of support, but the others will interpret his fall to be the fall of what he once symbolized for you, and that will embolden them.
There are many reasons to seek Obama's victory, and few reasons, in my mind, to seek his defeat, or to think we can profit from it. We won't get somebody better, or more powerful in our cause, until those who oppose him now are finally defeated.
If nothing else, think of the rebuke it will represent to the GOP. Think of the loss of morale, the feelings of futility. All this negativity, all this rage and insanity, and for what? For Obama to return to power, despite everything? If Obama can be useful to you for nothing else, he can be useful as a symbol of just how defeated the Republican Party is, if he wins a second term. If nothing else, he gives you time to build the new liberal/progressive movement under the shelter of a Democratic Majority, and he provides Democrats with the chance to return the balance of the high court to the left.
It breaks my heart to have to say such things to my fellow liberals, who should know better by now, but there's no point in conceding any kind of power, especially as far as Obama goes, to the Republican Party.