Progressive economic legislation is going to cost a ton of money and time. Why?
Regressives. Economic regressives. They have spent the better part of 40 years building out think tanks, media, and law to support the idea that we need oligarchs to handle every area of our life, make our choices for us, operating behind the law, unaccountable, because why?
They have more money? Last I looked, one's bank account is no measure of the solidity of character, only aggression and ability to put ones own self above others, no matter what.
Maybe that's not true for all very wealthy people, but you know what? It's true for ENOUGH OF THEM TO MATTER.
And the GOP...
The GOP decided it needed a new strategy a while back. Rather than compete in the sphere of public debate on the strength of it's social and economic ideas, it chose to validate and empower racists, bigots and theocrats in return for their votes to favor economic regressives!
Think about that. Empowering assholes to vote for wealthy facists and oligarchs to screw the rest of us over socially and economically!
Where is the, "need to be nice to them" in that? Where is the burden for consideration in all of that? Why can't we just begin to step up and call these people out for the asses they are?
Could it be that speaking truth to power is a contact sport, and most people are not in a position to handle that contact? I sure think so. Jobs are a mess, costs and risks are very high for most average Americans, and their options are increasingly limited, by outsourcing family wage jobs, back filling with hair, laundry, and nails, service jobs.
(not that anybody doing hair, laundry and nails is not doing something worthy --they are, and my rant isn't about that)
A SLAPP lawsuit, or unfavorable promotion, maybe even some lighter scale, subtle discrimination could cost enough to put a family struggling into the red proper, impacting them in potentially deadly ways, given the state of health care here.
Is there any wonder people walk this world, head down, just trying to weather the storm?
No. None at all.
And then there is my party. Democrats. Folks, I love self-identifying as a Democrat, and I love self-identifying as a Progressive more, but I have a problem.
The problem is my party is dominated by economic regressives. They appear to be generally liberal socially, and they game the perception of the two parties being polarized, when the truth is on economic grounds, THEY AREN'T.
Economic regressives believe in trickle down, they believe that if big business is doing well, we all do well. They believe in free markets where our fine laborers here are put up against laborers in nations with few to no work standards, dirt floors, long hours, and economic / currency differences such that they can work for pennies on the hour, maybe dollars, artificially devaluing our people here, despite the fact that we are more productive than we've ever been, and it's not fucking enough!
Democrats are going along with that shit people, and I'm having a increasingly hard time defending the party as a whole, because it can't seem to come to grips on it's regressive element and represent us proper, as it should, instead playing silly games with rules, the GOP, Obama, the media, you name it!
Why are we allowing this? How come we are not building up progressive challengers, right now, nation wide, 50 states to take these regressives out back for a little perspective, and their seats while we are at it?
How come we have to pretend to gloss over all of that, "for the good of the party", when the truth is we might see some management of the incremental damage done every cycle, but no real change?
Money is why. It comes down to money, and the regressives have more of it than anybody else does and they are willing to use it big to make even more money to solidify their grip on our economic thought, exploiting entire nations, if they have to in order to reach their goal of a global oligarchy that calls the shots for the rest of the world for no reason other than they would feel much better about it running that way.
Change is going to cost a lot of money, and a lot of work, which really means money, because so damn many of us are working longer hours, maybe two jobs, for less buying power in the face of higher costs and risks than we've seen in a long time.
Where is that core of the economic Progressives, and how come it's not out there telling the truth to people, calling them to action, setting up donations, asking for time, and empowering them to get the word out?
Who is fighting for ME?
That is what is on my mind as of late. I want to believe, I want to tell other people what progressive economic ideas are about and how those can impact their lives in a positive way, but I can't point to anything material. When I talk about Democrats, they ask, "what about?", and you name it, there it is! Why did we pass this, how come they botched that? What is the deal with these cabinet positions, and why are they so goddammed weak ass?
I don't think they are weak at all, just divided. There are progressive Democrats, regularly marginalized and kicked under the bus because they don't have the numbers or the self-support structure to matter, despite being most favorably aligned with the economic needs of ordinary Americans.
Then there are the regressive Democrats. I've held back on that for a lot of years, preferring to be nice, deferential, hoping there were options, but I am slowly coming to the realization that it's time to differentiate people and begin to build out support for more progressives, because there isn't anybody else in Washington that can fix this thing, who wants to fix this thing. The regressive majority, consisting of the GOP and way too many Democrats has won!
They have the numbers. They have the law. They have a awful lot of the media, and they are taking steps right now to own a lot of the Internet too. Oh, and they have the court, the Supreme court, capable of erasing or marginalizing any small gains we do get, keeping us on the defensive, unable to build, always preserving that which we fight for, struggling to advance, because we are just small.
THEY HAVE OUR PARTY TOO! Think about that for a minute.
Too goddammed small.
Change will cost money and time to check Citizens United with votes, advocacy, and the infrastructure required to empower Progressive Democrats to differentiate and build on their own.
I'm tired of taking shit over this stuff. Tired of being nice, politically correct, and for making excuses, or being willfully ignorant of the trouble. I am finding it extremely difficult to just continue on this path, watching the usual players, play the same set piece game. Change is going to cost us big. The only real discussion is just how much shit do we want to take, and how much do we want to pay for having taken it for as long as we have?
Written to this tune, which sort of works for me and the mood right now.