I think that if the Democrats end up passing laws that further limit women's rights, with particular focus on the reproductive rights of women at the most difficult times of their lives, it will be staggering proof that the crazy right, the Religious Right has won and it's only a matter of time - a long lingering painful dragging slow deterioration though it will feel - before the insane, rightist, anti-science, anti-humanity, anti-intellectual, anti-social, terrified agenda, a combination of a desperate embrace of fascism tied to a wild escapism into fantasy worlds and cosmic wars, truly dominates your life and mine.
Okay - so don't make my first sentence a paragraph long right? Got it. Let's try to do better...
I tend to think that, as we all understand that ships of state turn slowly, once they're heading in the wrong direction the drift towards the extreme in countries and their public policy displays a tremendous inertia. In our case this lurch to the crazy right was so powerful and sustained over the last eight years... carried out with such focused and co-ordinated effort... that it's going to be quite some time before the US starts shifting in our direction again. A Democratic President helps. But clearly it's not enough.
But it's not about traditional Republican Democratic labels anymore.
There genuinely has been a major realignment in politics. On the left we have been harping on for years about how little respect we get for being a different alignment than we once were, when you think of the set of views broadly associated with "the Democratic Party". Think of those of us with much more libertarian views than you'd have seen in the Democratic party of just a couple of decades ago.
But we miss sometimes - and I mean miss as in "miss the wood for the trees", we're not oblivious we just seem to forget or seem to almost not notice - the fact that the movement actually associated with today's Republican Party is absolutely not a Conservative one in the way Conservative was meant by large swathes of the Republican Party. David Cameron, of the UK's Conservative Party, is a Conservative. But he'd probably not be too far out of the mainstream in the Democratic Party of today, in lots of ways. Certainly is far removed from the views of today's Republican party.
Because of the crazy right.
"Conservative" has become like the world "Liberal" in the 90s. Embraced by an increasingly small number of people because of what the brand had come to mean. In the Liberals' case it was because of long term weakness by the Democratic Party in actually defending its core beliefs, or laying them out, as proud unabashed liberalism. Liberals failed for a long time to fight the co-ordinated attacks on all things Liberal with particular focus on the word itself, but a right-leaning power-biased media. In the Conservatives' case it's because the crazy right has hijacked the word, the movement, its Party and its propaganda machine.
But stepping back to the main point. That's right. We see, nowadays, libertarians allied to those who believe in government programs - how does that work? Well both are rationalists who believe in thinking thing through, proposing ways of doing things, debating their merits and then executing on one way or another proposed by one side or another. Then once the results are in revising our positions appropriately and debating the next step. The good, social-responsbility, government left can understand and accept it when libertarian alternatives are implemented from time to time because at least they're being argued from the principles of thinking hard about what's in the best interests of the country and all of its people. Libtertarians can at least understand what is going on, while firmly disagreeing on principle, with well-run government programs with good intention. Doesn't mean either has to give ground on the other's point. Just acknowledges society tends to swing between different philosophies and the most important thing is to have societal structures that keep things moving in a positive direction regardless of who runs the show.
I keep referring to it as the crazy right basically because this religious right, which has taken over the Republican Party over most of the last few decades, and which has taken control of most of its levers of power in the last dozen or so years, is insane by objective and measurable criteria. They are anti-rational. They appear incapable of following and adhering to (or possibly even understanding) basic laws of logic. They exist for nothing other than power itself. The are sociopathic, collectively and in some cases individually. They appear incapable of remorse, oblivious to shame, and show no reservation, discomfort or hesitation at lying repeatedly - even in ways that are so demonstrably false at very basic levels that are obvious to all and that are only proclaimed unseen by the most disingenuous, cynical and/or confused of people.
That these neo-fascist rightist movements are religious in drive, in nature, and in underlying organizing infrastructure, is a supreme irony. It is the clearest demonstration, to anyone who examines the issue with an unbiased rational point of view, of the powerful arguments from the non-theist (or certainly non-monotheist) community: that religion is merely a tool for control; that it's inconsistent with rationality; that it is therefore anti-scientific and would lead to untold losses of knowledge (both current and future knowledge); that it is exclusionary and divides people as a mechanism for control; and that as a result it is always manipulating people into conflict; that acceptance of inequality is built into their very foundation such that they can only exist in a state of constant conflict - both external and against "enemies within" - causing suffering and hardship and misery and death in far greater quantity than any benefits they supposedly deliver in comforting people in their lives.
The claim on a monopoly on happiness, for the poor in both mind and real wealth, has always struck me as one of traditional monotheistic religion's most wild and unsubstantiated claims. So much of the world is happier with their lot, by all evidence, without it. But I digress and pick a needless fight in a broader, and I think solid, argument.
The important point in all of this is that the Democratic Party has not adapted to this new reality. This new world. Obama may be like the candidate of the future, but he doesn't always appear to fully accept this changed world - either that or he's realised it but hasn't a clue how to combat it as nothing he's tried is working. Note, that is not to say nothing he is doing is succeeding, he's doing a lot, but his efforts to rebuild a cordial Washington establishment of the past, where Democrats and Republicans are friends and colleagues who merely differ on certain matters of conscience and principle - well those efforts are pretty much a failure. Either because that past never existed, and it was just better hidden by more primitive media and therefore never spilled out into the open causing the dangerous rampant extremist factionalism around the US today; or because you just can't unshit the bed. Once you break a system as badly as the Republican Party (largely at the direction of the insane neo-fascist religious extremist dangerous lunatic movement that controls it today) has broken this system, then it just doesn't work any more. It's time to fully appreciate this fact. Deal with it. Take a reckoning of the reality we are faced with. Harsh. Brutal. In the cold light of day. Just as I believe Obama is scrutinizing Afghanistan. But it's time to look at this crazy right wing threat as the deadly existential threat it really is, and I am just not seeing that out of the Democratic Party or Obama, just yet.
So... as this ship of state continues on its rightward drift for some time to come despite the hard gunning of the engines we're trying to facilitate, over on the left and the world of post-enlightenment sanity, the thing that worries me... That keeps me up at night... That has me writing a DailyKos diary nobody will ready on a Saturday night... is my worry that we'll overshoot a point of no return. We've a rigid two party system. It just takes some combination of circumstances - of which there are many many many such combinations - which leads to an election result that puts a Palinite, a post-Rovian cypher, into the position of President of the United States.
At which time I shall see the error of my ways and condemn you all.
To finish where we started, I worry that we've already passed the point of no return and the Palinite future is already inevitable. The idea that the Democratic Party would end up passing a bill that is so harmful to the rights of women and the acceptance of women as equal in this society, to me, suggests that the crazy right may have already won.
There is a scenario where they may appear to have won and still lose: the Republicans recognize that they may be able to get an abortion ban in return for a strong public option sees this as something they can win really big with their base on. They make the deal and healthcare gets through but is coat-hanger-future terrible in some of its features. This has the right's tail up. They even win a lot of seats for a while. But the healthcare results start to kick in. The idea sinks in. People start to realise what a great thing it is to have healthcare. The Democrats get most of the credit for it, while the crazy right overplays its popularity with its usual nonsense. Take the opportunity when can to reverse the Stupak stuff for the future. But I'd rather not go down that path.
