LIBERALTHAURUS WRECKS
ALERT: Some of the following may be deemed POLITICALLY INCORRECT. Do not read on if you are offended by independent thought.
I attended a house party sponsored by MoveOn.org, designed to give input into the future direction of this group, which raised tons of money and organized scads of volunteers to help first the Dean campaign and then the Kerry campaign -- two losing causes.
I wanted to suggest that the organization, which most strongly demonstrated the potential of Internet political organizing, should focus on mustering its resources toward protesting and ending the immoral, horribly mismanaged war in Iraq.
But only one other person at the party of more than thirty university-town liberals thought the war should be the top issue, even though it is not only killing thousands and recruiting countless numbers of terrorists monthly but pumping up the deficit and alienating the world. Instead, the vast majority wanted to work on two things: media reform and election reform. A third popular topic was infiltrating Christian fundamentalist congregations or trying to take their tax-exempt status away.
In other words, most of the MoveOn regulars, at least at this gathering, aren't ready to move on.
Instead of facing the reasons for Kerry's defeat, or picking up the pieces and moving on to fight the most important battles of the day, most of the house party guests remained fixated on blaming others for the Democrats' loss.
They think the media is biased against the Democrats. How would they fix that? They mentioned MoveOn working to get its own TV station, a TV version of radio's Air America. How would that change anything? Liberals and conservatives pretty much already patronize whatever media outfits fit their viewpoint.
The house-party liberals also believe with all their hearts -- all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding -- that the last two elections were stolen from the Democrats by Republican party efforts to suppress, undercount, and miscount votes. Never mind that Gore's lawyers lost Florida in 2000 by refusing to ask for a recount of the entire state, only targeting those counties they thought they could win. And ignore the fact that the Bush margin in Ohio this time was an insurmountable 136,000 votes.
Certainly better efforts are needed to make sure everyone gets to vote and every vote is counted. But you don't hear Democrats complaining about how Kennedy beat Nixon in 1960 due to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's assurance of the right to vote of thousands of dead people. It's only Republican shenanigans that need correcting.
When I pointed out that the only Democratic candidate to win a clear majority of the vote in the last 60 years was Lyndon Johnson in 1964, I was ignored. The MoveOn supporters remained slightly to greatly delusional. In fact, one woman insisted that Kerry actually had won 75 percent of the vote, but it was incorrectly toted up due to machine errors.
The various schemes put forth to corral, punish, scapegoat, spy on, or infiltrate Christian fundamentalist churches were even more wacky. It's a popular view of liberal Democrats that the Bush team won basically by manipulating sheepish, ignorant churchgoers -- with the help of the biased media and those right-leaning voting machines.
It's symptomatic of the progressive Democrats' deep malaise that rather than tackling issues that could appeal to a broad cross-section of Americans -- like the war (which half of Americans already oppose), the environment, and the deficit -- the party attendees are most interested in licking their wounds and looking down the road to the 2008 election--four years away--where another defeat is guaranteed unless the Democrats do something radically different.
But they won't as long as their "progressive" supporters do nothing to pull them back from the Democrats' 30-year-long march to the right. Instead of campaigns that would demonstrate power and belief in principle, these liberals would rather whine. They firmly believe that if only things were fairer, they would prevail. So fixated are they on this conspiracy theory that they ignore all evidence to the contrary. Republicans have won 51 percent or more of the vote--a clear majority of Americans--in seven presidential campaigns since the end of World War II. The Democrats have only the LBJ victory, plus narrow wins by Carter (who got just over 50 percent) and wins by Kennedy and Clinton with a plurality, but not a majority, of votes. The defeat of Democrats and their campaigns is hardly a new phenomenon.
Since 1980 and the Reagan Revolution, the Democrats have been afraid to speak of liberal values and have been running to the right. And their so-called progressive supporters keep running after them. When I mentioned building a third party as a possible strategy, they looked aghast, and afterward one woman asked me, in a tone of disbelief, "Why would you want to do that?" But nobody at the party questioned the assumption that the Democrats are capable of carrying a progressive banner -- even though the party hasn't succeeded in doing so since the Great Society era. "Moving to the center" was on the list of possible strategies, but even entertaining the idea of a third party was not. The unspoken assumption was that everyone who attended was a diehard Dem.
I have been a lefty, radical, or "progressive"--whatever term you want to employ--since the 1960s, and I am still just as strongly opposed to militarism, war, the assault on the poor and the environment, racism, sexism, and the hegemony of big business. But lately I feel a stranger in my own house. The MoveOn meeting, and other similar gatherings, remind me a little of an old-time religion, or secret society. Many of these folks who condemn fundamentalists for refusing to think for themselves haven't seemed to have an original thought of their own in thirty or forty years. They are doctrinaire about their issues of identity politics-- affirmative action and abortion rights and gay rights--and wouldn't even know how to handle a progressive who dissented from any of these issues. They remain largely clueless--and fatally incurious--about why people don't embrace their causes. They have concluded it's because the Republican voters are all stupid, misled, or manipulated, or because the whole thing is rigged by the media and election officials.
I felt like I was among a herd of dinosaurs, unable to adapt to a world that has passed them by: close-minded, myopic, and soon to be extinct.
ALERT: Some of the following may be deemed POLITICALLY INCORRECT. Do not read on if you are offended by independent thought.
I attended a house party sponsored by MoveOn.org, designed to give input into the future direction of this group, which raised tons of money and organized scads of volunteers to help first the Dean campaign and then the Kerry campaign -- two losing causes.
I wanted to suggest that the organization, which most strongly demonstrated the potential of Internet political organizing, should focus on mustering its resources toward protesting and ending the immoral, horribly mismanaged war in Iraq.
But only one other person at the party of more than thirty university-town liberals thought the war should be the top issue, even though it is not only killing thousands and recruiting countless numbers of terrorists monthly but pumping up the deficit and alienating the world. Instead, the vast majority wanted to work on two things: media reform and election reform. A third popular topic was infiltrating Christian fundamentalist congregations or trying to take their tax-exempt status away.
In other words, most of the MoveOn regulars, at least at this gathering, aren't ready to move on.
Instead of facing the reasons for Kerry's defeat, or picking up the pieces and moving on to fight the most important battles of the day, most of the house party guests remained fixated on blaming others for the Democrats' loss.
They think the media is biased against the Democrats. How would they fix that? They mentioned MoveOn working to get its own TV station, a TV version of radio's Air America. How would that change anything? Liberals and conservatives pretty much already patronize whatever media outfits fit their viewpoint.
The house-party liberals also believe with all their hearts -- all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding -- that the last two elections were stolen from the Democrats by Republican party efforts to suppress, undercount, and miscount votes. Never mind that Gore's lawyers lost Florida in 2000 by refusing to ask for a recount of the entire state, only targeting those counties they thought they could win. And ignore the fact that the Bush margin in Ohio this time was an insurmountable 136,000 votes.
Certainly better efforts are needed to make sure everyone gets to vote and every vote is counted. But you don't hear Democrats complaining about how Kennedy beat Nixon in 1960 due to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's assurance of the right to vote of thousands of dead people. It's only Republican shenanigans that need correcting.
When I pointed out that the only Democratic candidate to win a clear majority of the vote in the last 60 years was Lyndon Johnson in 1964, I was ignored. The MoveOn supporters remained slightly to greatly delusional. In fact, one woman insisted that Kerry actually had won 75 percent of the vote, but it was incorrectly toted up due to machine errors.
The various schemes put forth to corral, punish, scapegoat, spy on, or infiltrate Christian fundamentalist churches were even more wacky. It's a popular view of liberal Democrats that the Bush team won basically by manipulating sheepish, ignorant churchgoers -- with the help of the biased media and those right-leaning voting machines.
It's symptomatic of the progressive Democrats' deep malaise that rather than tackling issues that could appeal to a broad cross-section of Americans -- like the war (which half of Americans already oppose), the environment, and the deficit -- the party attendees are most interested in licking their wounds and looking down the road to the 2008 election--four years away--where another defeat is guaranteed unless the Democrats do something radically different.
But they won't as long as their "progressive" supporters do nothing to pull them back from the Democrats' 30-year-long march to the right. Instead of campaigns that would demonstrate power and belief in principle, these liberals would rather whine. They firmly believe that if only things were fairer, they would prevail. So fixated are they on this conspiracy theory that they ignore all evidence to the contrary. Republicans have won 51 percent or more of the vote--a clear majority of Americans--in seven presidential campaigns since the end of World War II. The Democrats have only the LBJ victory, plus narrow wins by Carter (who got just over 50 percent) and wins by Kennedy and Clinton with a plurality, but not a majority, of votes. The defeat of Democrats and their campaigns is hardly a new phenomenon.
Since 1980 and the Reagan Revolution, the Democrats have been afraid to speak of liberal values and have been running to the right. And their so-called progressive supporters keep running after them. When I mentioned building a third party as a possible strategy, they looked aghast, and afterward one woman asked me, in a tone of disbelief, "Why would you want to do that?" But nobody at the party questioned the assumption that the Democrats are capable of carrying a progressive banner -- even though the party hasn't succeeded in doing so since the Great Society era. "Moving to the center" was on the list of possible strategies, but even entertaining the idea of a third party was not. The unspoken assumption was that everyone who attended was a diehard Dem.
I have been a lefty, radical, or "progressive"--whatever term you want to employ--since the 1960s, and I am still just as strongly opposed to militarism, war, the assault on the poor and the environment, racism, sexism, and the hegemony of big business. But lately I feel a stranger in my own house. The MoveOn meeting, and other similar gatherings, remind me a little of an old-time religion, or secret society. Many of these folks who condemn fundamentalists for refusing to think for themselves haven't seemed to have an original thought of their own in thirty or forty years. They are doctrinaire about their issues of identity politics-- affirmative action and abortion rights and gay rights--and wouldn't even know how to handle a progressive who dissented from any of these issues. They remain largely clueless--and fatally incurious--about why people don't embrace their causes. They have concluded it's because the Republican voters are all stupid, misled, or manipulated, or because the whole thing is rigged by the media and election officials.
I felt like I was among a herd of dinosaurs, unable to adapt to a world that has passed them by: close-minded, myopic, and soon to be extinct.
VIEW 4 of 4 COMMENTS
barbiq:
thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
mistidawn:
Happy thanksgiving!!!