I'll warn you from the start that criticizing those of us who are genuinely having problems with our president is not going to get us anywhere. I see too many "hard core" democrats who will support anything just so we win elections. Labels can be divisive as is any attempt to pigeon hole someone rather than understand why they are thinking the way they are.
This article,Obama loses the left: Why his low approval rating may be here to stay, in Salon is raising a problem we need to deal with and name calling and banning people is not the way to deal with it. The November election is going to be a tough one and we need to heal some wounds if we are to win.
I have been fighting hard for values I think most of us share since I came back from my post doc in Israel to become a leader in the anti-war movement in 1965. I have done demonstrations, organizing, draft resistance, you name it. I have worked hard in campaign after campaign and especially for Obama in 2008 and 2012.
I have some real misgivings at this point as do many others. Read on below if you want to know about where people like me are at right now.
In my over 700 diaries here I have worked hard to express a minority position among us. I became a radical early on in the sixties and if you recall we were fighting policies of the democratic party at that time. I also have a good record as a scholar and I have used my scholarship to develop a world view that I think merits consideration. My recent book with Jim Coffman spells this out and I won't say more about the book now.
I want to try to outline what I see as major problems for the democratic party since the Salon article only touched on some of them. I am guilty of being naive in the way I dove in and gave Obama every ounce of me in 2008. He really is not all that different today but I am a bit less naive.
I had a nagging doubt even with all that enthusiasm. I mentioned my scholarship and that is where it came from. I am a systems scientist and where others will see conspiracy or treachery I see a system doing its thing. People like to believe they can control systems but in fact it is the other way around. We have seen too many very good men get swept up by the system. Because of some deep seated fallacies in our way of thinking, and this is universal, we almost uniformly blame the individual for not overcoming the system forces.
I knew this then and I know it much better now. Many of my writings here and elsewhere utilize ideas from George Lakoff who has used cognitive linguistics and his own version of systems theory to bring some important thought s before us.
Robert Reich in his Supercapitalism acknowledges the systems nature of modern capitalism without seeing it as a part of a much larger system in the way I do.
Now Thomas Piketty drives these ideas further in his scholarly work. The picture can be pretty clear if one is able to step outside the box and take a long hard look.
We are at a unique point in history for things have evolved to a point where change through the political process is almost impossible. One of the things the system thrives on is that very political process and the misguided belief that we can do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. Modern history seems very clear on this point. We have myriad elections, many revolutions, and the overall system grinds on adapting and crushing any real threat to its stability.
I mentioned Lakoff above for among his many lessons is the one that says that bending our message away from our values is always fatal and counterproductive. It is the one we seem unable to learn.
You can't bend progressive values to excuse corporatism, war, watered down health care plans, Monsanto, gas for energy and so much else that we are expected to support as "good" democrats. Throwing away our values is worse than prostitution for that can be defended more easily.
Now as I said above, I got going strongly in 1965 and have been fighting ever since. I have faced jail, physical abuse, and a lot of dumb attempts to shame me for not being "loyal". I endure insults from those shallow enough to play fundamentalist with politics and can only pity the damage such foolishness does to what our purported values actually are.
We may pay a price in November and it won't be because the republicans have better values. It will because some of us still don't understand those values and are willing to go off on ego trips rather than listen .