We knew in our hearts the the continual overreach of the rethuglicans would finally reach the tipping point. And now it has. (Sorry about the commercial)
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So all those states, even deep red states like UTAH are seeing some faltering on the culture war issues that were so pervasive for the last few years.
Why? Because women have awoken and splashed humor and rage and common sense all over the rethug bullies. Even Gov. Brownback of Kansas had to pull his facebook page because of all the comments.
The child that was murdered by some self proclaimed vigilante has now become the focus, much as Milly Dowler did in England, of the ill intended consequences of laws pushed out for the NRA's benefit but not much to anybody else's benefit. Now nobody is hassling the NRA, but they are hassling the County Attorney and the local cops. The latter did not make an arrest in what was clearly a murder, imo, or at least needed some burning questions answered. Questions that were not asked by either the cops or the County Attorney. Almost a million signatures have been penned to asked the DoJ to step in and investigate, not just the murder but the cops as well.
We've even got people worried about the people who make iPhones.
We are not winners yet, by any means, but we are becoming more and more aware of what the reality really is.
Reality is that the bullies who are pushing the punitive control over women are like bullies anywhere. Push back and they will back off. BUT we are left with the huge residue of the acid they have left behind them. We have all the bills they have put into place before people became aware and said "WHOA".
We've seen real success in some states, like Ohio, putting up referendums to kill bills. But a lot of states do not have those same abilities.
Make no mistake, the agenda of the far right has been hugely successful. They have created Right to Work laws that protect corporations and allow unlimited firing. They have made laws against voting access that will make it difficult to bring to the polls the amount of voters we saw in 2008. They have cut into unions ability to flourish. We have enough laws on the books to intimidate unions and keep them in check anyway, but we saw hits to workers who work in the public sectors. Schools, firefighters, FAA employees etc.
So whats next?
If we, the people, stay in silo mode and only care about our issue (unions, women's rights, LGBT rights, civil rights) we will be still muddling with this thing after the next election.
If we, the people, think that elections and elections alone will solve the issue we will again be muddling about these same issues after the elections.
I have watched the rw agenda with interest. I think we can safely say that will ALEC there is a rw conspiracy. As long as it was under the hood and not reported on ALEC and its legislation proliferated. ALL of the laws passed against unions and voters rights have been ALEC spawned. ALL of the privatization laws and the giveaways to various rapacious corporations have been pushed by this group. AND we have alumni of that group now sitting in the federal Congress doing much the same. These things are all funded by some very wealthy people with some BILLIONS at their disposal.
I am not clear about the culture wars however. I am not sure that if in their zeal to hire puppets the ALEC folks have pushed tbaggers in who are culture warriors or whether the ALEC supporters are also culture warriors. It doesn't matter however, since it is clear they are supporting each other.
We see very clearly that the agenda is to enrich the rich, dismantle the safety nets, dismantle the regulations and the regulators and allow the culture warriors to war on gays, blacks, immigrants, browns, reds and other religions.
I have this vision in my head that when all of these little pawns and puppets who are in elected office woke up and saw their facebook page there was a collective "HOLY SH!T!" echoing through the halls.
You all have noticed that the 4th estate, the one we thought were the watch dogs, aren't doing their job. Why? Because we haven't had 1) the awareness of the problem, 2) regulators didn't do their job and we have monopolies, 3) regulations are written FOR them and not us and 4) we haven't done our job which is to demand that reform, real reform start now.
They may claim there is no money, and there isn't in the paper news. But the cable news and the network news and even online news has money. And they can hire people, a lot of people, for the kind of money that they pay O'Reilly and Hannity et al. Even as much as we love KO and Rachel, the need for expanded news teams is frickin' critical.
We cannot expect new legislatures to create the world we want because we have seen clearly they wont or they will only partially go at it. We have to demand the world we want and keep demanding it. The rw'ers have been enormously successful doing just that. Of course it helped that there was a lot of money to pay all those lobbyists with. Try as we might we haven't been able to break that choke hold money has on our electeds. Again we haven't done our job and demanded reform. Nor have we demanded that Justice Thomas be impeached along with Scalia for their obvious politicizing the SCOTUS and taking on the Koch brothers as their personal sponsors. (Well we have, but not to the tune of a million people signing a petition.) Apparently real Occupy movement supporters in dc might have well be invisible.
Solidarity is the real answer. AND it means you may have to rethink that attitude of caring only about one issue. BECAUSE if you want support for YOUR issue you have to support other's issues.
I welcome your thoughts on what nexts.