No, not "DONE"

The following began as a response to a comment in inclusiveheart's outstanding diary, DONE. Much like my waistline, it grew too big to be contained and spilled over into a larger space.

Yep, the nation is in a dire strait. I won't sugar-coat it. But the fight isn't over so long as there is even one American who knows that the system is broken, is able to say so, and is willing to do something about it.

Political movements, like all creative trends, follow a predictable, cyclical pattern:

At some point, those with vision and passion look at their current landscape and shudder with disgust. "Its all so much empty bullshit", they say. The conventional, accepted forms have lost the potent charge and those who follow those forms are creative midgets, timidly frittering away their time on the margins of their own unquestioned assumptions.

"Enough!", cry the visionaries as they set about to explore new forms. They challenge the unquestioned assumptions of the status quo. They kick over the conventional forms in order to get at something more human; something with a little soul and grit to it. Something that speaks to the real lives of real people.

And sometimes they succeed. People-- first other artists, then the those artists' fans and followers-- flock to the visionaries' new "more real" forms. What was once "crazy", or "wrong" or, "over the edge" becomes the accepted font of new creative energy. The new forms flourish. What was once so recently subversive and edgy quickly becomes conventional wisdom and, slowly, the bandwaggoneering starts.

In time, the visionaries' once-radical ideas themselves become conventional. The contours of the New, New Thing become the safe, unquestioned assumptions of the new status quo. The creative risk (and the humanity) begin to drain away as the late-adopters busy themselves with refining and extending the accepted norms.

Until one day, people with vision and passion stand up and say, "Enough!" And the cycle repeats all over again. The blues becomes rock and roll, becomes prog rock, becomes jazz fusion, becomes punk rock. It is the way of things.

I said all that to say this: The problems we are having now are because this general pattern has been, to some degree, short-circuited.

The authoritarian right has zoomed at warp-speed from the fresh energy of radical ideas to the dangerous territory of unquestioned assumption. Moreover,  consequences are compounded by the fact that the elements of those very assumptions were never based in reality to begin with. They've pushed so hard, so fast, in such an off-kilter direction that the ranks of Dems and liberals are still widely populated by the late-adopting bandwagoners and marginal stuffed shirts of the last iteration through the pattern. Many of those now in power in the new Democratic majority are those rode into power on the unquestioned conventions of the last cycle. They are not visionaries, or big thinkers; they are the ones who inevitably come late to the dance once all the "right people" are already inside and get in the door solely based on their ability to nod their heads and go along.

Those of us with vision and passion in the Democratic Party and in the wider liberal and progressive movements are pushing against two sets of outmoded unquestioned assumptions: those of the authoritarian right, and those still held by the late bloomers of the last period of liberal ascendancy.

The defining, unifying characteristic among those within the Democratic Party who are responsible for things like this weekend's substantially dangerous and politically moronic FISA capitulation is that they got their "in" into the party by being head-nodders; yes-men to someone else's vision who only got on board once the waters were safe. It is our duty-- no, its if our greatest opportunity-- to push these pushovers toward a new vision.

The republic is far from "DONE". We can turn things around.

In the short term we must pull double duty. We must assail the unquestioned conventions of the authoritarians, but we must also kick over those held by many at the top of the Democratic Party. Here are a couple last-gen assumptions that need to die:

Oh well, there's always the courts.

For years, Dems could let a lot of contentious and wrong-headed legislation pass because they could safely assume that the truly awful stuff would get kicked over by the courts. 20 years of authoritarian dominance of federal judicial appointments makes this assumption a non-starter. Congressional Dems must be shown that they need to write legislation with the presumption of a hostile court, hand-picked to cede more power to the already powerful. That means fighting it out to the end in the legislature on every contentious point, especially where basic rights protections and civil liberties and concerned.

We have to marginalize the loudmouths and rhetorical bomb-throwers

The authoritarians nurture their most radical elements. They teach them how to dress well and talk on the TeeVee. They spend vast rivers of cash on patronage systems to keep a ready cadre of writers, pundits and other opinion-makers loyal and diligent. Dems still act like they have a 40-year bulletproof majority where loudmouths only make things more complicated. In the current environment, Dem's STFU stance to, yes, us, is counterproductive and self-defeating.

In short (too late) we should take the reality that so many in the Democratic Party are last-generation late-bloomers as an opportunity. They owe their careers to being pushovers and it is our best opportunity-- no, it is our duty as citizens with a clue-- to make sure that we are the ones doing the pushing.