Reading Netroots blogs gets depressing, the content is repetitive, the problems are all too well known and the solutions are obvious, but they aren’t seen as solutions by the corporate or political establishments, they’re seen as lethal threats.  So we’re portrayed as radicals, we’re demonized by Republicans and ignored by Democrats, tens of millions of Americans pay no attention at all to us, many of them don’t even know we exist.    

You can look out across cyberspace tonight, you can see all words written on progressive blogs, all of the insights and commentary, all of the assessments, you can see all of the passion and dedication and idealism, but most of all, you can see the futility, the frustration of people who have no power.  It doesn’t matter if you’re Kos or Hamsher or the newest blogger on the smallest blog, the view is the same and so is the dilemma . . .      

You can see a million miles tonight,

But you can’t get very far . . .

The whole smoke and mirrors act that’s going on over there is an attempt at consolidation of the Democratic Party’s takeover of the Republican Party’s one time position at center-right and fully conservative on the political spectrum. This has in fact happened, and is being glaringly highlighted almost daily by the conservative positions the Obama administration has taken.

1. War Maintenance. Pull-down in Iraq is made up for by expansion in Afghanistan. This way the MIC and war profiteers can keep the money flowing.

2. Domestic Spying/Decimation of the Bill of Rights. Nothing has changed, Obama’s got DoJ defending illegal policies of the Bush admin.

3. Energy Non-Policy. Huge new subsidies to coal, nuclear and petroleum/natural gas industries, pittance for renewables or necessary infrastructure (grid replacement).

4. Women’s Rights. Under the bus right at the HIR starting gate.

5. GLBT Rights. No one’s allowed to talk about it – Don’t ask, Don’t tell.

6. Nuclear Slouch. Too sloppy to be called “policy,” Obama has authorized the production of new nuclear weapons and the new START is a joke. He’s still wasting trillions (when the accounting’s done) on a missile defense system that can’t be made to work and couldn’t prevent an attack if it did work.

A year ago, when Obama was inaugurated, when the new Congress began with huge Democratic majorities, I thought the Bush/Cheney years were finally over.  But they’re not over.  Nothing has changed.  

I’ve supported Democrats for 40 years. Despite all their betrayals, I felt I had no choice.  I told myself they were the lesser of two evils.  I told myself incremental change is better than no change at all.  But nothing has changed. Nothing will ever change if progressives keep supporting the Democratic branch of the Corporate Fascist Party.

During the Great Depression, Woody Guthrie traveled across America and saw the injustice, poverty, and despair of a nation suffering the consequences of economic and social injustice. In the city square, in the shadow of the steeple, by the relief office he saw his people.  They were hungry, they were out of work, they were out of hope.  As he was walking that ribbon of highway, he saw what America is, but he also saw what America can be.   He never stopped hoping that someday, America would become a land of economic and social justice. So he wrote This Land Is Your Land, as an anthem of what America can be.

His story is our story, his anthem is our anthem, his land is our land, his cause is our cause. Woody Guthrie told the truth about America because someone had to.  He told it across this country, as he walked through the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling, with a guitar on his back and the truth in his soul . . .

…….Docudharma.

Before I get into the reasons why I’ve decided to discontinue posting essays or comments at buhdydharma‘s Daily Kos-inspired blog, let me briefly explain why I began posting there in the first place.

Geez, I can’t leave you kids alone for even a minute, can I?

In the past 24 hours there have been four recommended essays on this blog devoted to the governance and/or publication policies of another, larger group blog dedicated to electing more and better Democrats. I wrote a fifth essay last night about the topic and then deleted it.  I deleted it because it wasn’t quite right.  I wasn’t sure why, and I couldn’t fix it, so I deleted it.

What I wanted to say then, and am saying now, is this:

My Brother and Sister Bloguer@s:

Like many of you, I have written for Naranja for many years.  And I still post there.  Like many of you, I have lived through all of the pie fights, the flame wars, and the bannings, always hoping that blog would continue to morph and change and grow ultimately into a progressive group blog.

Needless to say, it hasn’t.  And I doubt it ever will.  I think it has slowly but surely become part of the main stream and that the level of control there has become unacceptable at the same time that nastiness of commenters has run amok.  I am not going to take the time to chronicle the many events that led to its present senescence.  I will still post there occasionally because, as Robyn pointed out yesterday, that’s where the people are who need to be taught.  And I have some things I would like to tell them.  But I don’t see that blog being or becoming a progressive blog.  Ever.  No matter what.  That has never been its collective intent.

Which brings me here, to docuDharma.  This lovely blog, which I have considered a home for a full f*cking two years now, is so much freer, so much more wide ranging, so much more progressive, so much more interesting, that I don’t want to spend time looking ruefully at disappointing Naranja in my rear view mirror. I want to look out the front windshield at blogging the future, and I want to point out to you, brothers and sisters, what lies ahead for us in the future of progressive blogging.

I have no proprietary or financial interest in this blog.  I know that those who own it and run it and make it continue to operate have allowed all kinds of ideas freely to be expressed here. Including topics that can get you banned elsewhere. So it seems to me that if we really want a progressive, leftwing (am I being redundant?) group blog, and I think we all do, what we need now is to build docuDharma and help it grow.  Then we will have what we want.

How do we do that?  We can build it in two simple ways: first, we put up lots of writing that is as excellent as it can be, and second, we let others know how excellent this blog is.  In other words, building docuDharma, if you’re like me and have no responsibilities at all for the behind the scenes part of the blog or its governance or its technology or its finances, is easy.  All you have to do is write well and let others know that there’s good, progressive reading here.  If you build it here at docuDharma, they will come.

I think Naranja has jumped the shark.  I’m disappointed but not surprised by that. But the best answer to its obsolescence, to its impending irrelevance, is right here.  It’s to build a larger, more excellent docuDharma with your creativity and love.

Hasta la victoria siempre, davidseth

     I write today to honor the loss of those who came before us, and not only the greatest among us but also the names we will never know, those who were dear to only a few, but just as important to what our nation is today, and what it should be in the future.

    So I ask you, my fellow Dharma Bums, what is it you hope for?

    And by that I not only mean what you seek to accomplish through blogging or in politics, but also what you hope to achieve in your personal lives, what you hope the world becomes through your work here on earth, and what you hope to leave after you are gone.

   I have always been a political creature. Myu mother’s brother was a self proclaimed socialist, and under his guidance I began to read voraciously the works of the greats, Orwell, Thoreau, Knut Hamsen, J.R.R. Tolkien, Chaucer, Dumas, more names than I can recall. Reading has never been a hobby for me, it has been part of my life’s work. It has shaped the man I am today, and while reading the work of the many talented writers here I have found much to be joyful for, and much food for thought.

   I always wanted to be a writer, or a teacher, or a journalist. That is my hope.

   Now I find myself settling at times, and simply hoping to find decent work that can earn a decent wage.

   But I do not lose hope. I am a fool, in that regard.

   In my writing/blogging, what have you, I hope share ideas, to learn, and to teach. I hope to meet like minded people and people who disagree with my views, in order to learn more, for, if we never hear that which we diod not think ourselves, how are we to learn?

   With that in mind I have read many things I disagree with, vehemently at times, passively at others. I have read Ayn Rand, Mein Kampf, Machiavelli and Newt Gingrich.

   Often I have read work that I thought I would disagree with at the end, only to find myself em[powered by what I thought I would not agree with, such as the works of Karl Marx, Adam Smith, barry Goldwater and others who I thought I would certainly oppose, only to find that I agreed more than I would have believed I would.

   Politically, my issue is Accountability. Accountability for the class war, the super rich and the Corporations they serve.

   Accountability for the power elite, the Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s, the Sanford’s and Ensign’s, the Baucus’s and Ross’s and the others of their ilk.

   I champion the powerless and disenfranchised, the fight for equality and civil rights, not because they effect me so personally, often they do not, but because I see how many people they do effect, and the injustice that is borne when it should not be so.

   I have been accused of siding with the unpopular decision for the sole sake of doing so. I admit freely to it. It is the unpopular speech that needs the most protection, the minority that must be fully protected if we are to pretend to be a nation of equality under the law, and not equality under who has the most dollars.

   I hope.

   I hope to create a better world. I see a nation of so many opportunities, and yet so much injustice. I see a people of such brilliance and grace, and yet we are mired in povery and division, and in hate, when we should be in love, united, and not divided.

   I hope to help create such a world, a world of peace and love, a world of equality, both legally and economically, where none go sick or hungry, where all my have a home and a hope and a dream they can work towards achieving.

   I am a champion of many issues because there are many issues that need someone to fight for.

   This nation and it’s people are worth fighting for, worth dying for.

   Many people can be divided into two groups, those that see others as less than they, and those who hope to see equality in all of us.

   That is the fight we see today. Hate vs Love. Empathy vs Disdain. Hope vs. Fear.

   I have much that I fight for, because there is much worth fighting for.

   So, I sk you, my dearest comrades, my fellow Dharma Bums, what do you hope for, what do you fight for, and what do you think is worth dying for.

   I am eager to learn as much as I can, and to share whatever you will have of me.