It seems pretty obvious that the current administration is a coalition of bullies. They have made this entire country a bully among nations. They run roughshod over political opponents. They try to crush critics and political opponents. They have used the modern machinery of war to attack and destroy weaker nations. Domestically, they have launched a cultural war based on racism, chauvinism and religious bigotry against the poor, women, minorities and gays.
However, this isn’t really going to be about them. There is a funny thing about bullies. They are often surrounded by large numbers of syncophants, enablers, mobs of weaker people who enjoy the protection of the bully, often swarming in to get in a few licks once the bully has knocked the chosen victim down. Fearful, not possessed of their own strength, their own power and their own conviction, these people will operate in the bully’s shadow, yet insist that they are their own.
Sadly, many of the people acting as the enablers, the mob-like supporters of the Republican bullies, are in the Democratic Party; against leftists, against the poor, against gays and especially lately against women and activists for women’s health. I’m not just talking about the Vichy Dems in Congress. I’m talking about people who call themselves liberal while blaming members of the left for the losses of the Democratic Party over the last few decades.
crossposted at Liberal Street Fight
This trend has been bothering me for some time. Like anxious grade schoolers, many in the Democratic coalition have blamed Nader, gays, the poor and lately women for the continued ineffectiveness of the Democratic Party’s recent candidates. Here’s an example I found thanks to the Daou Report on Salon. At a blog called Norwegianity, one finds:
Republican moderates should just switch parties and move to the left. They’ll never get any respect from the knuckledraggers who have as big a hold on the GOP as radical feminists had on consensus-driven women’s groups.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but NOW and Emily’s List and other women’s groups gave up on politics by consensus ages ago. Taken literally, that approach allows even very small minority factions to paralyze entire organizations.
That’s where the Republicans are. Much as they try to be top down, they still have to work their way through public meetings and party events where the lowest political denominator prevails. They pick their speakers carefully, but you wouldn’t have to look very far at a GOP convention to find folks with interesting opinions of liberals, Jews, Freemasons, etc.
It’s a veritable cesspool of hate movements, and the only ones they love to hate more than liberals/socialists/communists/jews are turncoat moderates.
So, and this is an opinion we’ve seen in so-called center-left magazines and especially lately at leading Democratic Party blogs like Daily Kos, we see the assertion that women’s groups are THE SAME as right-wing fundamentalists. The Democratic Party only loses because it is held hostage to such groups. Perhaps if only such groups, crazed activists representing women’s health for example, could be purged or cowed into line, the Democratic Party might do better, or at least not get beat up so badly. Perhaps if they adopt the language and attitudes of the bullies toward certain elements of the Democratic Party/left coalition, things won’t be so bad. Passive aggressive and weak, that is the voice we too often hear form certain elements on the “center-left”.
Of course, many see in the Dean candidacy, in the principled stand of real leaders like Rep Conyers, Sen. Boxer, Sen. Feingold and Sen. Durbin, one can see the TRUE way to fight bullies. Stand up to them. Don’t follow their tactics. Don’t attack others in some pathetic attempt to protect yourself. Stand up, go toe-to-toe. The way to fight a bully is to stand up to them.
That is how the Democratic Party will become a fighting, viable party again, by standing BESIDE the very groups the Republicans attack.
No more bully nation. A progressive nation, a nation that recognizes our commonalities. That path leads to a winning future for the Democratic Party, and for our country.