Monday, November 22, 2004
MONEY: We're not even officially into the new "All Republican, All The Time" government the election brought us and they're already allocating money for a presidential yacht. Nice. If this were something foisted on the public by the Democrats (remember when the Dems were the 'spend, spend, spend' party? Ah, the good old days...) the Republican Idea Machine would be all over it. Everyone in America would have heard about it from at least 10 different right-wing "independent" sources by a week out. As it is, since the democrats have proven largely inneffective in getting messages like this out, we probably won't hear anything. That's a problem, obviously, because this is important. Yes, it might be just a little money but look at it this way. The administration has been cutting money for college grants to poor people, cutting money to children's medical and care programs (for mostly poor people), cutting money for proper bullet-proof vests for soldiers in Iraq for pete's sake and now they're saying "Hey, here's a few dollars for a new yacht." Nuts to that. This perfect for a Progressive Idea Machine. This needs to be out there. We need to be mocking and jeering them relentlessly for doing this.
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
DIFFERENCES: One of the main problems a lot of progressives had (and have had for quite a while now) is the Democractic party's seemingly official stance of "Republican Lite" or "We're not them". The Democrats saw what Bill Clinton did, embrace a lot of positions nearer to the middle of the political spectrum, and have completely misunderstood why he did that. Instead of understanding that people really aren't "left" or "right" for the most part, they have beliefs in different areas all over the map, they've tried to totally blur the lines between the two major parties so they can lure people away from the right on maybe a few issues and get them to vote Democratic. As I think the 2004 election showed, that's not going to work. Instead of saying "Hey, those guys suck, vote for us," progressives need to force the Democratic party to say "Hey, here's where we can be better for you." And with the modern Republican party, I don't think that's too hard to do.
When I talk about the Republicans, I'm not talking about the majority of right-thinking Republican voters. I'm talking about the administration and the people in charge of the party who have swung farther to the right than most people would like if they thought about it. What we need to do is highlight that and the differences between them and us (us meaning the Democratic party in terms of elections but really I mean progressives).
The big idealogical difference between modern Republicans and progressives is that Republicans are all about money and progressives are about people. Look at Bush's campaign platform. Once you get rid of the religion and bigotry based agendas (which you're not going to get people to move on, ever), it comes down to money. Their issues were tax breaks, forcing you to move your social security money to the stock market, government spending, tax breaks, reducing corporate oversight/red tape (code for increasing corporate profits), etc. Of course people care about money, it's important. But even if you ignore the fact that none of these issues really benefit anyone but the top 10% and corporations, this is a pretty dry platform. Our issues need to point this out and play up how we are for people. Their issue is paying less for medicine, our issue needs to be maintaining quality of life for the elderly. They go for the pocketbook, we aim for the heart. All the while pointing out clearly even though all they talk about is money, they don't want it to go to us. The fact that almost all of tax cuts pushed through by Bush went to the top 30% or so should have been trumpted around the country by the Democrats and they ignored it. There were vague accusations but the time for vaguery is done. We need to show people in numbers and in stories how we are different. They are giving us all the rope we need to hang them, we just need the guts to tie the knot.
Thursday, November 11, 2004
FLEEING THE SCENE: I started writing this as a response to a comment in my original political thread a few days back but rambled on enough that I didn't want to waste it on a comment. :) So, here it is.
No, I'm not prepared to say 'Well, this country fucked up so off to Canada!' The point of the process we have here is not to give up but to fight to move things back. The best result for the right-wing groups in the country if those annoying liberal thinkers would all just leave and let them do whatever they want. But I like it here and I want to stay and fight them however I can. It might be a long process but if you look at it from a right-wing perspective, their machine took 30 years to get to the point it's at now with their golden dream child running things and their agenda at the top of everyone's mind. Yes, they have the chance to screw things up for a good long time if they get control of the Supreme Court and keep driving the economy into the ground but we need to play the long game too and it's impossible to do that if we all bail at the first sign of trouble, even if that sign seems like the train going all the way off the tracks.
Or, we can have a lot of fun sticking around just to make life harder for them. There's nothing better than riling up a conservative. My wife's mom actually told me to shut up the other day when discussing politics, which I have to say I count that as a kind of victory honestly.
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
CURSING: Here's something to warm your heart in these times of uncertainty and strife. Winston Churchill's 104 year old cursing parrot.
Peter Oram bought her for his pet shop after Churchill died in 1965. But he was forced to move her into his home after she kept swearing at children.
And if that doesn't warm the cockles of your heart, here's a post-election message from Get Your War On creator David Rees.
Monday, November 08, 2004
POLITICS: Well, well, well. Needless to say, the result of the last election is bad. Very bad. The right was allowed (and encouraged) to use ignorance, fear, and bigotry to get people to the polls and vote Republican across the board. Frightenly stupid religious zealots were elected to Congressional office. Nearly a dozen states now have institutionalized homophobia. Republicans have all the power they need to roll back 50 years of social governance and environmental reform. The president and the republican idea machine are spreading the word that the administration now has a "mandate from the people" to do whatever they damn well please so it's their way or the highway. Even if you believe the election wasn't at least tilted by errors in vote counting on untrustworthy machines and not just plain hacked, Bush was elected with only 59 million votes. That's only 26% of the adult populace of the US. That's barely 51% of the people who voted. But the media will undoubtedly repeat the "mandate" like a mantra until everyone believes it. That's really the secret of how they won, but I'll get to that.
I didn't do enough to help this time, I'll say that. I'm not someone who would feel comfortable going door to door or calling strangers. But what I am good at is writing and analyzing. So I'll be doing that this time around, at least at first. I plan on doing more this time, because this cannot be allowed to happen again. We were close to winning and structural and idealogical problems with the Democratic party were just enough to lose it. The country is not turning Republican. Even in the big red swath of states the news people love to look at, Kerry didn't lose in a landslide. This is not two countries. The vote was close. We were close to winning. There are many reasons we didn't but none are insurmountable. So I'm going to be doing some thinking and on issues like this, for me thinking means writing. I'm going to discipline myself to update this site more often with my thoughts on what we need to do to win. And not just in 2008. We have an incredible opportunity here to utilize the internet for pushing a progressive agenda long term. We're here at the beginning of the 21st century and I refuse to believe we're turning towards fear and conservatism. We must push forward.
I'm not saying anyone will, or should, listen to me but I'm going to talk anyway. I want discussion. Discussion and community are the hallmarks of the internet and they are the antidote to the right's idea machine. I'll be posting here for the most part not to get anyone to listen to me but to help myself formulate my ideas. I'll be doing more to involve myself in politics from now on and this will be my starting point. If you couldn't care less about my views, I'll still be doing book reviews and such but this is important and I can't allow myself to just sit and do nothing. If you don't want to hear ideas you don't like, there are plenty of right-wing websites you can visit. If you don't like my ideas, there's a Comments link below. Please use it. I want discussion.