Tuesday, February 04, 2003

Free Your Mind It’s time to get free.  Being a minority of a minority (a progressive democrat in a party that has given up on progressive ideas) helps clear your mind.  You don’t have all this baggage to defend.  You don’t need democrats who support throwing people off welfare, who tolerate anti-evolutionary nut cases in the educational system, or who defend the drug and prison industries rather than call for a national drug amnesty for non-violent offenders. There are times when moral clarity and political clarity are more important and stronger than the wimpy compromises that have to be made in a governing coalition.  The unjust war against Iraq is one of those times.  The rape of our common interests by Republican tax and spending measures is another. If democrats won’t filibuster totalitarian leaning court nominees or draconian tax policies that amount to the greatest looting of the federal government since the 19th century robber barons and railroad monopolies, than what are they good for.  Do they hope that by being “reasonable”, i.e. allowing three out of four bad judges to be confirmed, by allowing the draconian militaristic budget, but simply twiddling with the worst of the tax giveaways, that somehow Bush and Fox news will like them.  Ha!  Never. With all the talk in the air about appeasement and the comparisons with the unfortunate Neville Chamberlain, the real appeasers aren’t giving in to Saddam who doesn’t want anything from the U.S. anyway, but they are giving in to an anti-democratic revolution that is radically changing the social compact we have lived with for the past seventy years. This is why I was so happy to see three people sit-in at Senator Kerry’s office yesterday and today.  Three anti-war activists, members of the Green party, went into Kerry’s Boston office yesterday and refused to leave.  They said they would stay until he supported Sen. Kennedy’s call for a new congressional debate about the war, or until they were dragged off in handcuffs. Last night, they forced Kerry’s staff to stay overnight with them in the office.  Today, people brought them food and there was a support rally outside.  By mid-afternoon, one of the three had to go to the bathroom, and when they left, Kerry’s staff locked the door and would not let them return.  Then they called in the police, and the remaining two were arrested. Of course this has not gotten any media attention in Boston—but it is a harbinger of things to come.  The impact is not on whether this will build a majority—Kerry will never take an unequivocal stand—and thus will never lead.  The impact is going outside the bounds, however tentatively.  These sit in protesters were free in their minds.  They weren’t looking for votes, they weren’t building coalitions, they weren’t trying to do anything except say NO, and they felt strongly enough to get busted for it. I think we will soon see a torrent of these kinds of actions.  It’s a terrible analogy, but we are like the heat tiles on the shuttle—the democratic party hangs together only so long as its base absorbs blow after blow—but eventually some of the tiles get rough or break off, and as they do, they cause turbulence, friction, uncontrolled yawing, and finally the breakup of the grand democratic consensus.  That is what we are witnessing over the war and budget and courts.  The shattering of the bonds holding together a coalition. Something radically new will have to emerge, that will have to be far more powerful than simply a decent candidate in 2004.  Something like the Moveon.org grass roots movement—which can mobilize completely independently of the media, the lobbyists, and the money.  So far these efforts are still doing democratic damage control.  But one day they will wake up and say we need something new.  Let Lieberman and his ilk join the Republican totalitarians.  Our battles will have to be fought elsewhere.  The sooner we get our forces in place, the better. Here’s one example of our problem, from ABC’s the Note “As has been pointed out elsewhere, but remains true, Democrats still haven't figured out how to overcome the cognitive dissonance of being against Bush deficits, AND against cutbacks in spending.”   What is the cognitive dissonance?  It is not the spending that is wrong, but the values that are wrong.  We don’t need military budgets greater than during the cold war, and the Democrats won’t come out and say so. 11:13:21 PM   comment []

© Copyright 2003 Toby Sackton. Last update: 3/3/2003; 11:24:20 PM.