The Light That’s Lost Within Us

(4PM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

(Cross-posted at Wild Wild Left)

Some progressives are dreamers.  Some progressives are fools.  I could provide you with more links to prove that than Wellpoint has policyholders hostages, but links aren’t required to confirm that reality, the healthcare reform fiasco has confirmed it beyond any doubt.  We have to remember though, that the Progressive Movement is still young, enduring broken dreams and indulging in foolish rationalizing are part of the process of growing and maturing.

A few Friedman Units ago, when one BushCo thunderstorm after another was deluging the nation, progressives decided something had to be done.  So on the brave and crazy wings of youth, we went flying around in the rain.  Acid rain.  A rain of blood.  A rain of corporate crime.  A rain of lies and deceit and corruption.  Our wings were torn and tattered, but there was still a light within us.  It was flickering, it was almost extinguished, it was almost lost, but it was still there . . .

Progressives were angry back then, we’re still angry at the way the earth is abused, by men who’ve learned how to forge her beauty into power.  We’re angry at the way humanity is abused, by men who’ve learned how to forge illness into profit, how to forge torture into patriotism, justice into injustice, law into lawlessness, and capitalism into a global death march into oblivion.

They’re good at that.

They’ve had plenty of practice.            

We’re struggling to protect ourselves from them, but we’re losing that struggle.  The sand is slipping through the opening.  We’re running out of time.  

With the energy of the innocent, we were gathering the tools we thought we’d need, but we’ve all seen how much good that did.  We reached for the golden ring of single payer, but were told we had to settle for the silver ring of the public option.  Then, when the Progressive Caucus collapsed because collapsing is what they do, we were told we had to be satisfied with no ring at all, we were told we had to settle for speeches praising it from the Democrats who took it away.

And when the smoke cleared, as Democrats took a victory lap around K Street, as Hopey McChange high-fived them for pulling off the biggest fucking back room deal of all time, as the light of reality went dark within too many Progressives, those of us who still have that light within us are turning to each other for refuge.

Because we know the Deluge is coming.  

Obama got elected and many Progressives we’re optimistic.  But that optimism faded as BushCo war criminals and torturers were assured they would not be investigated, as Wall Street criminals were protected instead of prosecuted, as the war in Afghanistan was escalated, and as high priests of hackery like Baucus and Conrad were put in charge of the ritual sacrifice of healthcare reform.  

And now, despite a year of ritual sacrifices the Druids would have been proud of, the praises of Democrats are still being sung at alleged reality-based blogs like Daily Kos . . .

Those Stonehengers wouldn’t know a chessboard from a slab of granite, but they said we were all witnessing a dazzling display of 12 Dimensional Chess.  They said Obama’s multidimensional brilliance would be revealed by and by, they told us Obama getting checkmated 50 times in a row by the RePugs was nothing to be concerned about.  He was just setting them up for the most annihilating defeat any political chess player in any dimension known or unknown had ever suffered.  It would be an epic triumph of such magnitude that awed political strategists of the future would still be talking about it a thousand years from now.

Well take a look at the progressive principles you say you believe in, Stonehengers.  Take a good look at them.  How many of them have been enacted into law?  I’ll give you a second or two to count them all.

Finished?  

That didn’t take very long, did it.  

You’ll never admit it, but you’ve traded your tired wings for the resignation that living brings, the light of reality within you has died, you’ve exchanged its bright and fragile glow for the glitter and the rouge, otherwise known as Change We Can Believe In, a very strange mental condition I’ll call Stonehenge Syndrome for obvious reasons.      

Diodorus Siculus hasn’t posted here for quite awhile, so I’ll share with you one his observations about Stonehenge Syndrome and the disturbing impact it had on the Druids . . .

These men predict the future by observing the flight and calls of birds and by the sacrifice of holy animals.  In very important matters, they prepare a human victim, plunge a dagger into his chest, and by observing the way his limbs convulse as he falls and the gushing of his blood, they are able to read the future.  

There are eerie similarities between the Druids and the Democrats, who as far as I can tell, formulate political strategy by observing the flight and calls of birds, and by the sacrifice of holy animals such as Dennis Kucinich.  In very important matters, they prepare the progressive victim, plunge a dagger into our chest, and by observing the way our limbs convulse as we fall, and the gushing of our blood, they are able to discern how many K Street contributions they can get for their reelection campaigns.  

So they can stay in power while their corporate masters continue to destroy the middle class, so they can snuff out the last light of reality within the Progressive Movement, so they can keep partying through this long last night of corporate debauchery before the Deluge hits, and buries America under a tidal wave of consequences.

And in the naked dawn only a few survived,

Still not understanding that menace so simple and so huge . . .

That swept away all they had known in the Deluge.