If you are a right winger, you may realize that we on Docudharma are not your typical liberals.  Or you may not have.

We are not typical in that most of us here choose to think for ourselves and do not follow the typical Democratic Line.  We believe, as some among you do, that the right to dissent from our government, even when it is in power, is sacred.

That may make us like you in that respect.  However, it does not make us like you.  You see, many of us may oppose our government for exactly the opposite reasons you do: it’s not that it does too much to solve problems destroying our society, it is that they do too little to correct the damage done since Ronald Reagan, George Bush I, and George Bush II.

Depending on our viewpoints, our solutions may be the same, though, and as long as we have common understanding, we may find common values.

Others on Docudharma may disagree, but I think one of the problems is in finding common understanding and common values.

So let me answer as best I can, speaking only on behalf, of course of myself, and not claiming to represent the entirety of the points of view of all Docudharmans.

What I would like to do is first talk about the ways we are unlike you and the ways we are like you.  For the disinterested, this has the advantage of driving the disinterested away right away.  Secondarily I want to divide you into groups, and the groups I am specifically talking to may have something or many things in common.  Others we or I may have nothing in common with.

Like you, there are some among our number who want to sit across from a table with you.  These are divided into, largely, two groups.  The first group is that of Survivalists:  If you count yourself a survivalist, these are people, who, generally, believe that civilization is doomed.  Perhaps unlike you, many of us believe that the downfall of civilization will be answered, not with individualist, Ayn Rand style perfection, but rather with a return to communitarian values_.  _I do not count myself among the group that wants to sit across a table with you, if you are a right wing survivalist.  And the reason is very clear:  Many of you are right wing survivalists because you are bigots.  And I have no truck with bigotry.  It may be that we share certain ideas and philosophies.  For example, you may believe, as I do, that the downfall of civilization is either inevitable or close to inevitable.

If you are the type of “right wing survivalist” I described above, the difference between you and I is that number one, I do not believe that people with more melanin than you are either responsible for the downfall of civilization or a threat to me personally if it does.  Secondarily, being a person with a prediliction for attraction to persons with the same sex to begin with, I also do not believe that it is those lousy homos who brought about the downfall of civilization either, rather that we are keeping it upright against the very best efforts of bigots to destroy it.  Finally, no, the Jews are not responsible, in my world view, for all your miseries and then some.  No, they don’t control the media.  No, they don’t somehow secretly control your lives.  

There is a second group of Docudharmans who would like to sit across the table from right wingers.  This group, more pollyanish than the first, believes that it is possible, in today’s society, to sit across the table with you, in a similar manner to the Coffee Party, and discuss where we might find “common values”.  Among these common values might be found, for example, things like what we get from the government in exchange for our taxpayer money, and so on.  I do not count myself among this group either.

To be very clear, I am not among the groups that wants to talk to you at all.  I style and believe myself, your enemy.  However, many on Docudharma have noted the many things we have in common, which is why I undertake this sacred duty.

Due to concerns of space, I will only cover two classes of “right winger” with whom we at DocuDharma might find common ground, in this installment.

You are officially the party of the status quo, now.  It’s time to start recognizing that, and acting like it.  And if you want change, then, well, make change.  Don’t whine about it endlessly, especially if you supported corporatist laws with lies and caveats to begin with.  And if you don’t want change, stop pretending you do.

The moment of President Obama’s election, the Democratic Party became the Party In Power.  It ill becomes the Democrats, and their apologists, and supporters, to complain about the very things they helped do and pass, or are, even now, helping do or pass.  For example, don’t try to sell me on how bad Wall Street has become, if out the back door, you are shoveling money at them as if there’s no tomorrow.

Don’t like the Tea Partiers?  Good.  I don’t either.  So stop talking about them as if they are all powerful bullies, terrorizing you.  You’re the government now.  Grow the fuck up and crush them when and if they become actual domestic terrorists.  You supported the means by which to do so.  People as supposedly far left as Alan Grayson voted to pass an extension on the Patriot Act .. do you really want me to believe they’re so dangerous and you can do nothing?  Oh, but you sure can do a lot about actual liberals who do anything but protest like baby kittens.

Let me remind you of a few things, Democrats.  It was your conservative corporatist wing that joined with the Republicans and refused to do anything about insane gun laws that have turned the entire 50 state union into some mockery of the Wild Wild West.  Yet now, Democrats talk about Tea Partiers having meetings with guns .. this is your fault.

Daily Kos’ Nyceve has an article up talking about how AHIP is kicking “sick kids to the curb”:

So, now we’re being told HHS will issue some clarifying language. Great.  Then the parents with the sick kids will attempt to enroll the kid in an insurance plan. The poor parent will be on her own, fighting the corporation to comply with the law.  And what will this insurance cost?  Does anyone think the insurers are going to stand down? Of course not, the fines for violating the law are negligible, they’ll take the fine.

According to Firedoglake, however,

This bill is almost identical to the plan written by AHIP, the insurance company trade association, in 2009.

The original Senate Finance Committee bill was authored by a former Wellpoint VP. Since Congress released the first of its health care bills on October 30, 2009, health care stocks have risen 28.35%.

If you were one of those people who supported the “Health Insurance Reform” act supported by the Democrats and President Obama, you were, in effect, supporting AHIP.

Remember what I wrote, a little while ago, about enforcement?

When it comes to whether the government will enforce these putative and “tough” regulations of the murder by spreadsheet people, will anyone go to jail?  If they get fined for not complying with these tough new regulations, will anyone even notice?  Will any enforcement be done that the insurance companies, using their paid lackeys in Congress, will not stop if it gets in any way onerous?

Don’t let that stop anyone’s triumphalizing partying, though, that enforcement and dastardly acts are being discussed only days after this piece of crap passed.  Yet that those same people who supported this bill so strongly (not nyceve, I think) now find this to be an immediate, surprising problem .. I guess no one could have predicted, huh.  

That didn’t take long.

Let the sternly worded letters begin.

Since the demise of the public option and single payer health care, what I’ve been hearing from some on Docudharma is that we should pursue solutions that are not to be had from the Federal government, like true universal non profit health care for all, from the states.  I’ve even recommended some of those posts out of sympathy or friendship.

But, to me, there’s a problem, here, Houston.

You see, the GLBT movement has already gone this way many times.  Where we have been rejected by our Federal government, many of us look to our states to make things better, to provide that which our central government is unable or unwilling to do.

Without engaging in hyperbole, there are some things I think people should think about when they talk about working on state-by-state solutions to the crises of social and economic equality and basic human welfare that bear consideration:

1.  One of the problems progressives have with the Federal government is the degree to which the central government is willing to countenance social and economic inequality.  This problem is exacerbated, not diminished, by going to the states.

What you are really doing is adding state level inequality to class and social inequality.

When the GLBT movement got little traction at the federal government level, the battle largely shifted to the states.

Despite the battles that have taken place, a curious thing has happened:  With few exceptions, the level of freedoms and rights LGBT people enjoy at the state level largely mirrors or corresponds with the pre-existing level of social acceptance already in those states to begin with.  There has been, with notable exceptions like Iowa, very little of the phenomenon of social acceptance of LGBT people spreading from state to state, as incrementalists would have people believe.

Oh, to be sure, many of the high profile battles have taken place in what the average American would deem “liberal” states.  Proposition 8, for example, lost in California, what most people would think of as a liberal accepting state.  But this obscures the fact that the rights LGBT people enjoy in California is already higher than in other states, less marriage, to begin with.

California has domestic partnerships which are in every sense the equivalent of the best civil unions available in other states.  Battles over LGBT rights are taking place in states that have, already, reasonably good track records, compared to the worst states.

But in Colorado, gay people have no domestic partnerships or civil unions.  This is not on the horizon, either.  To be fair, Colorado is rather middle of the road when it comes to LGBT acceptance.  We cannot legally be fired from our jobs on account of merely being gay, for example, which is not the case in other states.  But this is not my point:  My point is the social and economic inequalities which do exist between the states vis a vis gay rights tend to be “locked in” over a long period of time, and the battles consist of getting people rights that are in the final analysis willing to be given by the people.

When it comes to health care, or other areas in which the Federal government has failed in its duty to its citizens, there is every reason to believe that the GLBT model and history would apply:  States with a record and history of being willing to provide for their citizens are where these battles would occur and have a chance of winning, while citizens of other, lesser equal states will be told to suck wind and have few options.

In some cases, these could be different states than in the LGBT experience, but there is a dangerous overlap, and it’s the pattern that applies:  Inequality increases, it doesn’t decrease.

You see what’s coming, but you won’t admit it to yourselves.

In this essay, I am going to talk about things.  Things I wouldn’t dare to admit, even on Docudharma.  Except, I guess, tonight.

We have just seen the defeat of forces that would have otherwise saved countless millions of lives, all lives in this country, on the precept in my view that some lives would be saved, but not all lives could be saved, because the ego of certain people might get in the way.  People like Lieberman.  People like Stupak, who believe it is more important to sacrifice lives on the principle of their oppressive mandate to demean and control, in this case, women — but it could have been anyone else.  In other words, doing little on the basis that little is better than nothing.

But you forget the why nothing part.  Let me say first that I don’t agree and don’t believe.  All the lives could have been saved, but we chose not to, on the basis of a calculation based on political ego and miscalculation as to potential strength and resolve.

But I am not here to talk about that.  You see, I don’t agree and don’t believe that any lives will be saved.  I don’t think a single life will be saved on the basis of Health Insurance Bailout/ Reform, that could not otherwise have been saved by that person making the decision or decisions that the government is now going to force upon them.

If they save themselves, by buying junk insurance, for example, by government mandate, and by miracle of miracles, the insurance companies honor their contract, fulfill the mandate, and give those people, who believe even less than I do, a lease on life, it won’t be because you forced them to.  That will be because you changed the PATTERN, you forced people to do what they would not otherwise do .. but it will not be you “saving” anyone.  They will, then, have saved themselves, but not have saved the future.  The pattern is set.

You, Democrats, succeeded.  You will make young, healthy people buy insurance.. you will make them pay money to crooks, who may, if you cross your fingers and wish real hard, save them if they have to be saved.

This, then, is the pattern.  The pattern of things to come.

What amazes me is how little people understand themselves.  They don’t understand, and yet, at some level, they see.  They see without even knowing they see.

This might be a short diary, and I hope you will forgive me.

You see, one thing bothers me.  Columbo style, you might say.  You might say it sticks in my craw.  Makes me scratch my head in puzzlement.  But in order for me to ask it in the most expansive possible fashion you might have to bear with me while I circle, apparently aimlessly, around to my question..

We see these problems in our country.  Some of these problems revolve around accountability, others account to a systemic shafting of the middle class, and still others revolve around political will.

We have a country in which a Democratic Senator backtracks endlessly on basic oversight regulation for people who potentially stole or defrauded the American Middle Class out of billions or perhaps trillions of dollars.  Yet this is the same country that will have bespectacled IRS Agents showing up at a car wash with threats and demands for 4 cents in back taxes.

(HT/Colorado Is the Shiznit).

We have a country in which the Attorney General’s Office of the United States of America will spend lawyers, briefs, and endless uncounted dollars making sure that two people with the same dangly bits can’t possibly join their lives together in a manner that might make them eligible for one cent of government benefits — benefits their taxes paid for.

Yet we have this SAME country where, when even supposedly “respected” mortgage companies defraud millions and millions of home owners, nothing, apparently can be done — our government, we are led to believe, is utterly helpless to hold them accountable.

We know that accountability does still exist in this country, for some people.

We know, for example, that if I were to go out, with a finger in my jacket, and hold up a liquor store for $50, I would be going to prison for a long long time.

Yet we have this country, that whispers, siren like in our ear — “Just be a BIGGER criminal.  Steal MORE.  Then they won’t put you in prison, they’ll promote you to Secretary of the Treasury.”

So, to my question .. I almost forgot!

Oh man I just had the most horrible dream!  You see I went to this diary, wherein I was told, join, join, join them, and you can change it.  Learn the joys of coffee… then I went to this facebook page…..

Then I found myself somehow whisked to this town.  It was a strange town where people wore these strange clothes, like it was the 1800’s, but underneath the 19th century duds and bow ties and hats they all had on instead of a button downed white shirt and blouse, an Obama T-Shirt.

No sooner had I appeared, than a man with a vacant grin approached me.

"Civility and reason to you, friend!", said he.

“Uh, civility and reason to you!” I replied, my eyes widening at this odd greeting.

“Coffee hour approaches,” the man went on, as if in the same vein.  “What will you have?  Mocha?  Latte?  Frappucino?  Maybe a triple espresso cappucino?”

Well, I was getting a bit wigged out at the cognitive dissonance, you understand.  Little alarm bells were going off in my head, but I couldn’t place it.  “Uh, maybe some decaf?” I evaded, hoping to buy time.

"Isn’t Obama the best president evah?" The man prompted me.

“Uh, yeah, he’s great,” I answered, trying not to sweat too much.  The man nodded and walked on, seeingly forgetting he had offered me coffee.  “Coffee hour approaches,” the man mumbled, apparently to himself.  “It is the will of Obama.”

“Hey!” I shouted at the man.  He turned.  “Aren’t you supposed to be a grass roots organization?”

“Yes,” the man smiled.  “Civility and reason, and accountability, and equal justice for all.  All together in the grassroots.  Obama knows all, he sees all.  You will see.  Are you not of the body“?  Suddenly the man’s expression changed.  From vacant and pleasant to suspicious and demanding.

“Yeah, I’m of the body, dude.  Whatever you say!” I smiled back weakly, then ran.

There would have been no Wall Street bailout.  Instead, SWAT teams would have come with battering rams to AIG and Goldman Sachs, the windows would have been smashed in and the corporate officers would have been hauled away in orange jumpsuits and chains.  Then FBI agents would have been seen carrying off boxes of papers and computers.

If Obama was a socialist and the Democrats were socialists, there would never have been talk of “bipartisanship” from DAY ONE.

Instead, Obama would have run the White House the way that George W. Bush ran the White House, and Obama wouldn’t be talking with respect about Ronald Reagan.  Instead he would have been talking about the Republicanista Party in the same manner that George W. Bush referenced the “Democrat” party, and corporate CEOs would be invited not to lunch, but to testify at criminal inquiries.

If Obama and the Democrats were socialists, we wouldn’t now be debating how much of the taxpayer’s money to give the health “insurance” companies.

If Obama and the Democrats were socialists, the Democrats would be fighting and not asking people to vote for them because they did everything the Republicans wanted but the Republicans were still obstructing everything they did.

If Obama and the Democrats were socialists, the top federal tax rate on the highest earning Americans would be 70%-90%, not 35%.

If Obama and the Democrats were socialists, you might complain about the taxes, but the Federal Government wouldn’t be colluding with Microsoft and IBM about how many of your jobs to ship to India.

Look.  I know human beings are special.  I know that they think rather than feel.  I just got done with an exchange on Docudharma that was especially frustrating.

But there is feeling, and then there is what’s obvious.  It’s time to start choosing sides, folks.

And I say this for any number of reasons, but it’s in the air.  Can’t you smell it?

I don’t know the far flung future.  But I know what’s coming.  Not Exactly.  I can smell it.  Can’t you smell it?  If you can’t, what’s wrong with you?

I am a logician .. I am an atheist, but I can still SMELL.  I don’t need God or the Universe or the Dali Lama to tell me that humans are not only irrational but bent on their own doom.

Are you a hater?  Then your place is with THEM.  Otherwise, your place is with US.

Feel.  Open your mind, open your heart, feel the world around you.  It is the Afternoon of the World, the World is saying The Hour Is Late.

The Hour Is Late.  The sides are chosen.  These are interesting times.  Apotheosis is coming.  The Dark Man is here, or at least the Hour of His Coming is Approaching.

There was a storm.  A storm that shattered all our windows, in Denver Colorado.  A storm where the hailstones where as big around as my head, uncaring of gravity, shattering down, destroying, blowing shit up.  We hid under the desk, and were exhilarated.

The world of BOOM

And, yes, I’m hungry.  I’m waiting.  Can’t you smell it?  Again, what’s wrong with you?  I’m not supposed to be able to smell this in advance of you folks?  You religious folks?

Where are your senses?  Your vaunted senses?  Is the claim not that you can discern the face of God, while we cannot?