This open letter from Stan Goff (retired Army) to all Democratic politicians is bang on & tragic at once.
The opening and closing are excellent and I will excerpt below, but he goes off on a tangent in the middle and wanders from the main point… as the left is sometimes wont to do. 😉
I’ve felt for a long time as if the Democrats were actually doing more harm than the Republicans… I mean, the Republicans are trying to grab power, right, sure, that’s what crooks like the neo-cons & kings have done for thousands of years. But the Democrats refused to fight back. At all.
How messed up is that? They finally decide to fight after the election is given to Bush again? So frustrating… so the rant below came just in time for me.
I am writing this open letter to call your attention to the remarks made day before yesterday, May 17, 2005, to the United States Senate, by British MP George Galloway of the independent Respect Party. I do this because he serves as an example of why your party should be abandoned by the U.S. working class, by U.S. women, by oppressed nationalities in the United States, and by anyone who professes to be a progressive or a leftist.
George Galloway did that for which you have proven incapable; he spoke as an opposition. Since there seems to be a great dark space in the middle of your heads where the notion of opposition should be a void filled by parliamentary molasses and the pusillanimous inabilty to tell simple truths, I suggest you all review the recordings of Galloway’s confrontation with Republican Senator Norm “Twit” Coleman to see exactly how effortless it is to stand up to these cheap political bullies (watch the video). While you are at it, you can watch your colleague Carl Levin demonstrate exactly what I mean about most of you and your party, as he alternately hurls petulant cream-puff insults at Galloway and kisses Coleman’s stunned, clueless ass to give that toothy dipshit some comfort in the wake of Galloway’s verbal drubbing.
Galloway didn’t have to walk up to the docket and slap the cowboy shit out of Coleman though I admit I still struggle with my own secret urges to do just that with most of the air-brushed, combed-over, Stepford meat-puppets who now people the United States Congress. No, all Galloway had to do was tell the unvarnished truth, and it had exactly the same effect. If Democrats had half the spine that Galloway does if you would stop chasing your creepy little careers through the caviar and chicken-salad circuits of duck-and-cover American political double-speak, then not only would people like me not be calling for all to abandon the Democratic Party and take their fight to the streets like good Bolivians not only that, but you’d have won the last election.
The reason Galloway was able to break from your mirror party in UK Blair’s sell-out Labor Party and still get elected, is that Galloway fights for his convictions and the real needs of his constituents, and doesn’t run for cover every time the bully-boys of the capitalist extablishment attempt to take him down.
Here’s a hint.
People follow those who speak plainly and fight. Aside from Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee, and Cynthia McKinney (not surprisingly Black women who know where it goes if you let rich white men get away with giving you a bunch of shit) and a precious few others, the Democratic Party is not only just another party controlled by big capitalists; it is not even a good capitalist opposition party (much less a real opposition).
I agree with the frustration and the advice, but I object to his leaving Boxer, Slaughter & Conyers off the list… they have been fighting hard for years… and especially the last few months.
He then goes on to recommend mass worker strikes & although I do not disagree with general strikes as a very effective non-violent means of change I’m not entirely sold on the idea that they should be directed at the democrats
The kicker is in his closing… I agree, but I wish I didn’t have to.
Someone with a full frontal lobotomy could expose a Republican politician.
He exposed the spinelessness of the Democrats.
Yours very truly,
Stan Goff
They are getting better at standing up to bullies with Reid at the helm, but there are still too many Lieberman’s & Biden’s who don’t realize that there is no compromise with the neo-cons. They want power. End of story. And there is no bargaining with that as the ultimate goal.