Maybe it’s because the blogosphere is only really two presidential elections old, or maybe it’s just an inalterable characteristic of the left, but I hope one day we are collectively experienced enough to absorb the futility of which Bob Cesca speaks:
It always happens. When Republicans are in charge, we take the gloves off and fiercely attempt to replace them with a Democrat. But when Democrats are in charge, too many liberals take on this too-hip-for-the-room attitude and either criticize the arrangement of the two party system or insist that both sides are evil.
Neither side is flawless, however, one side is much closer to our values. The other isn’t even close. Shitting on “both sides” only serves to weaken the closer side — the Democratic side.
I’m just reaching middle-age, so it’s not that I am so long in the tooth that I’ve had time to figure out what younger people still need to learn. And it’s not like I’m not guilty myself. I abstained from voting in 1996 because I was displeased with the Clinton administration. When they impeached the Big Dog I woke up.
Electing presidents is only one opportunity for progressive activism. If you want to go out and try to fix our electoral system, I’m fully supportive of that. If you want to work on issues that both major political parties oppose, there are plenty of areas that are ripe for activism: prison reform, the War on Drugs, a less interventionist foreign policy, a smaller military/intelligence/homeland security budget, restoring sanity to our detainee policy, etc. However, you should recognize that changing these policies requires efforts that are largely divorced from electoral politics. Neither party is running many candidates who are on the right side of these issues. Some may pay some lip service to cutting defense spending or closing Gitmo, for example, but they don’t mean it. The ones that aren’t crazy are cowards. And, in any case, there’s not enough of them.
Think about an issue like marijuana legalization in terms of the struggle to win support for gay marriage. You have to convince the people and then the politicians will follow. It’s never going to work the other way around.
I’m still pissed that after we poured our guts into getting Barack Obama elected, a bunch of liberals decided to start attacking him before he could even be inaugurated. And then too many of them obsessed about policies that were dictated by congressional arithmetic, or by the lack of courage and unity of Democrats, or by political reality. Most of what is really wrong about America isn’t questioned by either party and has been a feature of every administration since the end of World War Two. Yet, one of the political parties is not what it used to be. It can be aptly described as:
80% paranoid imbeciles squatting in the rubble of the Space Age raging about Negroes and socialism.
20% hucksters turning a buck by pandering to the rage and paranoia of rubble-squatting morons.
Some of us noticed this during the Bush years. Most of the rest of us have learned it since then.
I mean, even if the president wasn’t the best, most effective, least ethically challenged president we’ve had in over half a century, he’d still be the only thing standing between us and an administration that would make Bush and Cheney look moderate. Did they not do enough damage in eight years to convince you that there’s a difference between the two parties? Really? You need more proof?
