soon to be Orange
How do you address the fact that The Democratic Congress has utterly failed us, the American People and The World….
On a blog dedicated to electing Democrats?
And by extension…..to supporting them?
Especially with a party apparatchik running around trying to whip people back into line?
Here is our problem….and to diffuse any suspense, I do NOT have a solution.
The Republicans are bent on creating SOME VERSION of a fascist state, using as their necessary enemy/villain/mannequin….Islamo < gasp > Fascists!!! (BURKAS!) Our only ray of hope is that they are just too fucking stupid to be as effective as the Nazis or Mussolini were.
The Democrats…..ah The Democrats!
Our true and shining saviors, the good guys, the folks who talked about how bad Bush was…sorta…before the last elections, but now have been revealed to be totally powerless or unwilling or incompetent (your choice!) to actually OPPOSE him. As one might expect from an …opposition party.
I won’t bother to run through all of the times they have done incredibly stupid things or used bad strategy or tactics or just completely caved, we all know enough to be thoroughly disgusted at this point.
The Usual Suspects point out that not ALL the Democrats are handing the reins of fascism hand over fist to the Republicans and Bushco as fast as they possibly can. It is just a MINORITY of Democrats who are willing to accommodate and abet turning America into a fascist state….well a minority,plus the Leadership….and thus we should NOT speak ill of them….or oppose their non-opposition. Criticizing or giving up on the Democrats after this INCREDIBLY bad run they have been on is…bad…..somehow. They will get better if we just leave them be to give away America as we know it. AND we got minimum wage!!!! (and all we had to do was give Bussh 90 billion dollars to kill Iraqis to get it!)
What we should do, they say is work on our local level to change the Democrats….the solution to fighting a fascist state is to infiltrate the Democratic Party and spend the next twenty years rising to power in the Party structure and THEN we can have …..actual Democrats. Instead of fascist enablers.
Well that is all well and good…it is a valid strategy after all…..IF The current batch of Democrats wasn’t INCREASINGLY handing the keys to our democratic form of government and our Constitutional Rights to the Republican fascist lite regime….Right Now.
Long term strategy is great.
If you have a long term.
Which we don’t.
It is not just the specifics of how they are spelunking our country away. That is bad enough.
But at each fork in the road where a decision can be made about what this country is, they are handing The Balance Of Power to the Republican Totalitarians. They are ceding The Battle Of Ideas over what this country is and is supposed to be. They are accepting, granting, and even embracing the Idea of America as a fascist state.
We are…as these things are measured…..still relatively high up on the slippery slope. But it is not called a slippery slope for no reason….we are steadily sliding downward.
It is now The Accepted Reality that America starts and wages aggressive wars, It is now The Accepted Reality that America tortures, It is now The Accepted Reality that America spies on its own citizens, It is now The Accepted Reality that government officials are not subject to the rule of law. Even if found guilty, they are pardoned.
This IS what America is now. This IS what America stands for.
Because the Democrats have not stopped these things. Because they have not used whatever drastic and extreme powers of legislation, prosecution, obstruction and public relations at their disposal to stop them.
These are ALL Republican Ideas. But the Republicans are brainless idiots who have no clue that they are creating a fascist state. They are to stupid to see past there own ideology and loyalty to their party to even really CARE what they are doing, as long as the can defeat the Dems and get them to cave it doesn’t matter what the result is. They are happy to introduce fascism to the country….just to make the Dems look bad. They are too stupid to face the fact that they have started a juggernaut of injustice and totalitarianist policies that are destroying everything America is supposed to be. They are almost reflexively instituting fascism. Creating their reality faster than even they can react to it. Or reflect on what reality they are truly creating.
But these things only truly become reality when the Democrats do not do EVERYTHING in their power to stop them. And they haven’t. They have instead embraced the notion that they are powerless until ’09….and then a Golden Age can begin.
Pelosi’s recent interview is just shameful. Hold them accountable indeed.
By giving them everything they want every time they ask for it….accountability.
Right.
I said at the beginning here that I have no solutions. That is not strictly true. I have no solutions that will work without the Democrats leading on those solutions.
The list of solutions itself is fairly clearcut.
Do NOT bring Republican legislation to the floor, make the Repubs use parliamentary procedure.
Make the Repubs actually filibuster.
Obstruct, obstruct obstruct…even if it means closing down the government.
Arrest and prosecute those who are defying subpoenas.
Cut off funding the war.
Bring articles of Impeachment to the floor, successful or not.
And finally…..go on the frikkin television and tell the American People what is happening and ask for their help in stopping it.
Iow….OPPOSE.
But they will not oppose.
Because they are afraid to be called Soft On Terror, or Unpatriotic, or Cowards.
Well, Congressional Democrats…..YOU ARE Soft On Terror, and Unpatriotic, and Cowards. Because you have become accomplices to Bushco….who is all of those things and more. Of course….you don’t CARE when your base says that to you, do you? You only care when Fox news or Dick Cheney says it. Not US.
All that it takes is for good people to do nothing.
And they can’t even do nothing.
They are actually HELPING the evil that is Bushco.
What are we going to do about the Democrats?
We simply CAN’T not vote for them, then the REAL fascists win. Not voting is NOT a protest…it is only a way to become another ignored entity in the process. All the politicians care about is winning with those who DO vote. They don’t pay ANY attention to those who don’t vote. Not voting is not a protest, it is just giving up on the process….they DON’T CARE if you don’t vote.
We can do what we can to dry up their coffers by not contributing, but part of the problem is the vast amounts of money they get from K Street and corporations.
We CAN March. And keep Marching
We CAN Protest. And keep Protesting
We can STRIKE!And keep Striking.
We CAN try to make them more scared of us than they are of ‘them.’
We COULD flood their offices with phone calls e-mails and faxes. But I learned through all of my attempts at that with impeachment that too few people actually DO that. It would take thousands of calls a day to actually affect anything and we don’t seem to have the collective will to do that…..or do we?
If the 2000 active Kossaks and Dharmaniacs….and the thousands of more lurkers reading right now ACTUALLY WENT TO THEIR PHONES AND CALLED PELOSI and their Congressmember RIGHT NOW….it could make a difference.
If we actually JOINED TOGETHER to call them or fax them to say, I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore…it WOULD have an effect. Especially if we did it every day.
It might not work….
But it WOULD have an effect.
It MIGHT make them just a little bit MORE scared of us…and a little less scared of them.
And that, my fine friends, is what we are down to.
If we want to stop the madness….including attacking Iran, we….YOU actually have to DO something about it.
I don’t know what to do about the Democrats. This is the best I can come up with. But I can guarantee you this….thousands of calls and faxes a day WILL make a difference. IF we do it together.
ALL of us doing it together will make a difference.
ALL of us uniting in the same effort will make a difference.
In point of fact….the only thing that has a CHANCE to make a difference is US….ALL of us…joining together as one voice and yelling the same message.
If the phone is busy, send a fax, if the phone and fax are both busy send an e-mail….but keep calling.
Think about it …please….if thousands of people a day actually called and said the famous line “I Am Mad As Hell And I Am NOT Going To Take This Anymore,” it will have an impact. It’s not much of an idea…as I said, I have no solutions….but it is SOMETHING, some kind of direct action.
We have to make them care, we have to scare them.
Or we slide farther and ever faster down that slippery slope.
It’s up to each one of us…it’s up to YOU.
Take back America, while their is still something left of it.
One thing is now CERTAIN…..The Democrats aren’t going to save us. It is up to We The People to save ourselves. And we can only do that by uniting in action. Even an action as small as a telephone call. The RW Fascists Lite count on US to be just as craven and ineffectual as The Democrats.
Let’s prove them wrong. Because I for one….Am as mad as hell and I am not going to take this anymore.
Toll Free Contact Congress! 1-800-828-0498
Office of the Speaker
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Washington, DC 20515
202-225-0100
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Have you got a better one? Or should we just watch as America slides into the sunset? It is up to US.
It isn’t enough to call the Speaker. You have to call individual members of Congress. In particular, you have to call YOUR Rep. A hint: no one will know if you choose a zip code in some other district.
You say:
We have the will, but I’ll repeat what I’ve been saying for a bit.
We lack the numbers.
These blogs are a great start, but in reality the numbers are small compared to the media efforts by the right. Add up Rush, Hannity, and Loofah Boy. Their combined listenership / viewship is far greater by a significant order of magnitude.
So when they issue a call for action, the congresscritters report phones ringing off the hook unlike anything they see at any other time… e.g. the recent immigration battle. Reports are Congress had seen nothing like it in years.
So, one day we (collective left leaning media) will be able to compete for attention through our calls. But not today.
Then the next question. What else can we do to get their attention? Besides defunding them as best we can (a mixed results strategy at best), how can we break through?
I don’t have the answer either, but I’m not prepared to give up.
Cheers.
Without real action in the streets, in the marketplace, and at the polls, nothing will change. The Dems are Repubs with better manners. The system supports the status quo. Change the system. It will hurt, but it will be worth it.
It may even be inevitable.
I think that making those calls would be a good thing to do, but will have a very short lived impact.
My brain has shifted gears today to thinking about how we really can’t accomplish anything until we tackle and take back the media. Without a fair and free press we can’t get the truth, they won’t hold the govt to account, and they make the whole money game of elections spin out of control.
The best short to medium range thing we can do is get back the media through pressure on FCC, media deconsolidation, fighting for fairness, undoing the 1996 Telecom Act. We need congress with us of course to make that happen.
I don’t know enough yet and this will be my new research project and I’ll report back here when I’ve studied and gathered.
Until we the people get back the media, there is no way in hell we are going to get back our country. It will take less time than reforming the entire Democratic Party. The reform of the Democratic Party can’t happen until we take back the Media and reform campaign funding, which requires taking back the Media etc etc….
So yes, lets make the calls. What do you all think? Should taking back the media be our first and focused priority? Am I cuckoo cocoa banana nuts? shhh don’t answer that part.
This is what I called “realism” in this post here (to an audience of maybe half a dozen)… do take a look at my suggested alternative, “unrealism”…
She is the cancer that destroys all our organs. She is the leader of the chamber we really control–the chamber of the people–not the states. Because she is a woman, she is not attacked viscerally. She is a mistake–we need a piranha, and instead we got a Grandma guppy. Until she’s overthrown, Bush rules the roost–it’s as if he pays her off. That’s silly, Cheney signs those checks.
Resource depletion and financial collapse are coming our way. Just as it took the misery of the Great Depression to fundamentally alter the role of government in American society, it will take the Great Depletion to make the Progressive agenda a reality.
Preaching logic against the Fox/Limbaugh noise machine is just a waste of energy. The best thing Progressives can do now is craft plans that can be swiftly implemented when the tide turns. That is why the manifesto and policy clarification efforts here are very important. Let the Kossacks howl with rage and despair. We need to think through pactical remedies for clearing the wreckage of a predator-ravaged American society.
and contributed to Dems in the past. New and existing candidates count on these same people to volunteer and contribute to them as well. Since I sent money to candidates throughout the country and volunteered for Dems here in MO, I’m on a lot of lists.
When called to volunteer or asked to contribute even at the state level, I refuse and tell them that I no longer trust the Democratic Party to represent my interests. I inform them that during this election cycle I will ONLY work or contribute to primary challenges against Dems who support Bush’s agenda. When asked if they their candidate will get my vote, I tell them that I’m at the point that I don’t trust any of them to represent my interests. The only Dem who is guaranteed my vote is my Representative who always refuses to support Bush’s war agenda and the dismantling the Constitution. I also ask them to inform leaders in the party that they are hurting down ticket candidates by rubber stamping Bush’s agenda.
My Democratic Senator could care less what the people who worked to get her elected want now that she has her seat for the next six years. She is very busy proving that she is a Third Way Senator and not really a Dem at all.
Don’t know if what I’m doing will have any effect whatsoever but it is the only thing I can think of to do.
ban anyone fed up “too soon”…
we need to face this thought experiment every time this is a question: what if they just actually voted for what they want? I don’t mean “they didn’t vote the way they want, but should have”… I mean, what if the votes they case, i.e. for the IWR, really were not them being fooled (could they be so stupid?) but because that’s what they believed and wanted.
When they do a show filibuster and not a real one… it’s because they want it.
When they “get fooled” in NCLB, no, they wanted it as is.
If you just consider things that way it’s a very stark picture, but things make a lot more sense, and it’s possible to predict their next “failure” (aka “success”)… to understand why there are always well-prepared (if still pathetic) excuses, and so on.
The problem with our ruling party is that it is bicameral… the Democrats and Republicans have ruled together for quite a while not and this is their product, what you see is their method, it is what it is, accept it as it is.
It may seem depressing, but less so than intentional self-delusion.
right now is:
WILL THIS BE FRONT-PAGED ON KOS?
I had a heated exchange with a front pager over at Dkos yesterday who was promoting the concept that what is happening to the US is definitely not fascism, no not by a long shot, but rather something that he was inclined to name Bush Authoritarianism.
I’m not really very fast off the starting blocks any more and didn’t add much constructive opposition to the dialog, sadly. I’m still thinking about it a lot and it may take weeks to sort it out.
I called that particular version of reality a whitewash, and now understand what intuition made me blurt out. Blaming Bush for the situation absolves the Democrats. As you correctly point out, they are unmasked as enablers and co-participants, by their own words and deeds.
So I agree with you to that extent. But the author on Dkos said something that you also seem to be saying, and I have to disagree with both of you. That is the concept that the Republicans are blunderers and dolts, especially Bush, and lead us astray because they never had a proper sense of direction in the first place. Excuse me If I misstate your point.
I compare that to Hillary’s view that invading Iraq is chiefly a problem at this point because it has been badly managed. Of course Paul Bremer piled up ruinous decisions, one after another, and we will be lucky to outlive their consequences. But this idea of equating creation of a failed state with poor governance may also be a whitewash, and a dangerous one at that.
Iraq is a notably failed state and so is Afghanistan. When the fiscal consequences of war finally come home to roost, so may be the US. Some say that this is intentional, that the goal is to radically reshape the world in ways that we can barely imagine. I think about this a lot and cannot say they are wrong. There is too little information in the public domain to judge the matter fairly.
What I do see is that the Democrats and Republicans sing in the same choir. They take bribes from the same pro-war lobbies and ignore public sentiment with the same savage alacrity.
I have always believed that impeachment was taken off the table because it was sold to a group of known and trusted lobbyists for several million dollars. The public can never buy it back.
We have been sliding down a slippery slope, as a nation, since before you and I were born. I believe with Thom Hartmann that corporate personhood is really at the very center of the problem. Corporations can outbid voter groups — it’s a freedom of speech right. Nothing will go well until that changes. Which means undoing over 100 years of corporate case law — a total social upheaval, in other words.
So no happy news. I think the current system of democracy in the US leads to a failed state, inevitably, with bipartisan blessing. And the probability of that outcome is directly proportional to the percentage of voters casting their ballots for either Republicans or Democrats.
Is this tragedy just bad management? My guess is no. I think some very smart people resent everything we hold dear about the Constitution and the entire concept that humans are entitled to anything at all, including free air.
George Miller is my Representative in Congress and he is a good man. But our district includes several refineries. There are big time real estate interests rebuilding a closed Navy base. There’s a large Air Force base and other military facilities. George supports Pelosi wholeheartedly and he is one of the best we have.
We are starting to see the effects of a cancer that is metastasizing. I’m not a doctor, but I think the patient will die. About all we can do now is look at what may be possible after the funeral.
Sorry, that’s how I see it.
i don’t accept that America starts and wages aggressive wars, tortures, or spies on its own citizens
it is George Bush and he does not speak for the United States of America as framed in the Constitution
he speaks for his cabal
he is not my country
at this point
but that it is a moral imperative to do something, even if immediately ineffective.
Akin to the Burmese monks.
… we should be supporting and loudly praising the Progressive Caucus instead of shouting curses at the rest of the scurvy dogs.
In pontificator’s diary he quoted from an email from the ACLU – they were glad to be included in the deliberations but they were unhappy with the result thus far.
The only Dems in Congress now that are on our side are the Progressives. Maybe we should give them some love — hell a LOT of love.
And then the others will get jealous because we’re ignoring them! 🙂
if it’s a simple as the Dems being scared of being labeled as “soft” on the war on terrer. That’s gonna happen no matter what.
Methinks something stinkier is at work.
At any rate, I do think it’s a good idea to have organized call-blitzes. Certainly couldn’t hurt.
“Despotism, Authoritarians, Fascism & Neo-Cons.”
Here, at docudharma, we decide, together, each day or maybe a couple times a week, on an issue to call about. Then, one of us is designated to go on big Orange (where there are lots more people) and diary it. The rest of us rec. the diary and make comments, and bingo, it’s on the rec. list. Thus generating some action.
is “Hello. I just need to know whether _____ has noticed that the Administration is actively engaged in destroying the Constitution? And why exactly does _____ feel their oath to defend it is something they can fail to keep? Will turning a sacred oath into a joke be a privilege extended to mere citizens anytime soon, or is this just for our rulers? I’ll hold while you get the answer, or shall you call me with the answers?”
a lot of all this. It’s like looking into an aquarium (not that I think you are all fish or anything). I’ve been watching for a long time, tapping against the glass, waving, trying to interact.
Last November I watched as the aquarium exploded into a frenzy of colour and celebration. All around were darting golds,reds,neon blues and greens.Splendrous shoals of joy endowed previously drab rock and coral with hopeful warm hues and a look of miniature violcanoes as life imitated magma in unrestrained happiness.
A sailor kissed a stranger and as they broke apart, the skies turned grey and then a coughing brown. I never thought the show would be so short. From outside it looks to my eyes as though you’ve been unforgivably let down.
had it down all the way! Remember, remember, remember!
Give Peace a Chance!
do the unexpected … keep my BIG MOUTH SHUT … on this one. (gasp!)
do the unexpected … keep my BIG MOUTH SHUT … on this one. (gasp!)
My bad. I think I know what I’m doing wrong. This will be a test … multiple or single, here we go.
Once again, MY BAD!
George Bush save us!!!
This was snark, but would they cave in like this if George Bush were to say that this country was under attack from Zombies?
And you are all invited here, where we do a weekly series on who we should replace DiFi with.
And we should come up with other Democrats that we should primary out if they continue to cave in.
The Republicans defunded Somalia, and took the House in the next election.
The Republicans impeached the President, and took the White House in the next election.
The Republicans gave us the Patriot Act, and took the Senate in the next election.
None of these acts was particularly popular, all were controversial, and the Democrats seem to have missed the larger point.
Americans like an opposition party that shows a little spine.
Democrats eat poo…