(no subject)
law school is going great; i couldn't be happier, actually. however, this post is not about school because i have found that my sanity means having some separation of thoughts between school and not-school, lol. so i'm going to write about my frustrations with president obama/the dems vis-a-vis the recently (as in like 2 hours) announced ruling against DADT.
"As a candidate for president, Senator Barack Obama vowed to end “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Once elected, he remained critical of the bill but he said it was the role of Congress to change the law"
this pull-quote, to me, perfectly explains why there's such a tremendous enthusiasm gap on the democratic side. replace DADT with any issue that the core democratic constituency cares about, and it will pretty much end in the same result. depressingly, the disappointment is not that obama-santa-jesus didn't give us any presents, it's that he was just more of the same.
when you sell people on the idea of hope and then shatter that hope, you will never EVER get it back again. if you think the idea of a republican takeover is scary, at least they're brazenly telling you what they're going to do ahead of time. also, they had their revolutionary moment and managed to get quite a lot changed (including pass war resolutions and tax cuts with a 50/50 split(!!) in the senate). the dems had their moment and managed to pass a "universal" health care bill that will give, let's just say, generously, kids, dependents, and old people access to the same old shitty insurance we already have the pleasure of purchasing (now with mandates!) ...only to have THAT get hung up by ONLY having 59 senators (gee whiz, if we just had 100, i bet we could still...not get fuck-all accomplished).
i think the reagan fetishists and haters alike mischaracterize the big appeal of RR. to me, he projected/was packaged as a winner, and from the time the very first kid is picked in peewee football to be the QB or little girl is picked to be "tiny miss inappropriately dressed USA," americans are conditioned to idolize winners. it matters not the rightness of your argument or the righteousness of your cause; people want to be in the cool crowd with the winners, and they will cause significant detriment to themselves and everyone they care about just to bask in the glow of the winner.
in the one illuminating bit of dialogue ever to arise from a michael bay movie, it sums up what dems must do to hang on: "losers whine about doing their best. winners go home and fuck the prom queen."
dems/obama, america is your prom queen.
you absolutely must come out fighting if you ever hope to hang on to any semblance of control of the national agenda and discourse. however, this does NOT mean you come out fighting against your own side (see gibbs and "the professional left", rahm and "fuck the UAW"). if you care about busting up unions and antagonizing people advocating for stricter environmental/education/health/economic regulations, there's a place for you in the republican party. there are specific planks in their platform addressing each and every one of those. if you want to be a democrat, it's because you believe unions are the only way most factory workers get health care or pension plans (which they take in exchange for PAY, thank you very much); it's because you believe that quality education is a universal right, and you're willing to cut just about everything else before you tell schools that they have to start firing their damned (shamefully underpaid) teachers; it's because you believe that our earth IS a zero-sum game, and eventually all that abuse is going to come back to haunt us in a very significant and Michael Bay-esque fashion (what's with the michael bay obsession tonight?); it's because we think capitalism is a fine economic theory, but like another great theory, democracy, its lack of a sufficiently strong structure will eventually (has already?) corrupt the virtues of the system and brings us right back to tyranny; and last but certainly not least, it's because goddamnit, no person should EVER--fucking EVER--have to suffer or die(!!) just because they're too damned poor to buy their meds or see a doctor. that is seriously some Dickensian nightmare that we're too proud to admit we're currently living in. just because we don't have chimney sweeps doesn't mean poor people have it any better.
i guess it's true that under every cynic is a wounded idealist. i think it's that i still care that hurts most of all. so, to come full circle, obama/dems, a little less talk and a lot more action.
"As a candidate for president, Senator Barack Obama vowed to end “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Once elected, he remained critical of the bill but he said it was the role of Congress to change the law"
this pull-quote, to me, perfectly explains why there's such a tremendous enthusiasm gap on the democratic side. replace DADT with any issue that the core democratic constituency cares about, and it will pretty much end in the same result. depressingly, the disappointment is not that obama-santa-jesus didn't give us any presents, it's that he was just more of the same.
when you sell people on the idea of hope and then shatter that hope, you will never EVER get it back again. if you think the idea of a republican takeover is scary, at least they're brazenly telling you what they're going to do ahead of time. also, they had their revolutionary moment and managed to get quite a lot changed (including pass war resolutions and tax cuts with a 50/50 split(!!) in the senate). the dems had their moment and managed to pass a "universal" health care bill that will give, let's just say, generously, kids, dependents, and old people access to the same old shitty insurance we already have the pleasure of purchasing (now with mandates!) ...only to have THAT get hung up by ONLY having 59 senators (gee whiz, if we just had 100, i bet we could still...not get fuck-all accomplished).
i think the reagan fetishists and haters alike mischaracterize the big appeal of RR. to me, he projected/was packaged as a winner, and from the time the very first kid is picked in peewee football to be the QB or little girl is picked to be "tiny miss inappropriately dressed USA," americans are conditioned to idolize winners. it matters not the rightness of your argument or the righteousness of your cause; people want to be in the cool crowd with the winners, and they will cause significant detriment to themselves and everyone they care about just to bask in the glow of the winner.
in the one illuminating bit of dialogue ever to arise from a michael bay movie, it sums up what dems must do to hang on: "losers whine about doing their best. winners go home and fuck the prom queen."
dems/obama, america is your prom queen.
you absolutely must come out fighting if you ever hope to hang on to any semblance of control of the national agenda and discourse. however, this does NOT mean you come out fighting against your own side (see gibbs and "the professional left", rahm and "fuck the UAW"). if you care about busting up unions and antagonizing people advocating for stricter environmental/education/health/economic regulations, there's a place for you in the republican party. there are specific planks in their platform addressing each and every one of those. if you want to be a democrat, it's because you believe unions are the only way most factory workers get health care or pension plans (which they take in exchange for PAY, thank you very much); it's because you believe that quality education is a universal right, and you're willing to cut just about everything else before you tell schools that they have to start firing their damned (shamefully underpaid) teachers; it's because you believe that our earth IS a zero-sum game, and eventually all that abuse is going to come back to haunt us in a very significant and Michael Bay-esque fashion (what's with the michael bay obsession tonight?); it's because we think capitalism is a fine economic theory, but like another great theory, democracy, its lack of a sufficiently strong structure will eventually (has already?) corrupt the virtues of the system and brings us right back to tyranny; and last but certainly not least, it's because goddamnit, no person should EVER--fucking EVER--have to suffer or die(!!) just because they're too damned poor to buy their meds or see a doctor. that is seriously some Dickensian nightmare that we're too proud to admit we're currently living in. just because we don't have chimney sweeps doesn't mean poor people have it any better.
i guess it's true that under every cynic is a wounded idealist. i think it's that i still care that hurts most of all. so, to come full circle, obama/dems, a little less talk and a lot more action.