Saturday, November 06, 2004
The War is still on.
We may have lost this last battle, albeit with enough doubt about voting irregularities to cast a dark cloud of illegitimacy over the outcome. I almost have to agree with some of my comrades in arms, that it may ultimately work in our favor that Bush has won. He now needs to take responsibility for their misdeeds. No more blaming President Clinton. The disaster that they have created is now on their heads. The economy will not recover if there are more tax cuts. There will be no recovery with the loosening of laws that keep corporate America from fully plundering the land. We will not be safer with the continuing culture war on our people and the rest of the world. Now that they have been loosed by the electorate to continue their errant ways, the American people may or may not wake up.
I would hope that when jobs in the Heartland are finally sent all overseas to countries that barely pay their workers a living wage and have not even a glint of worker protections, that they would see that the current administration could give two shits about them.
With the inability to win on important issues facing this country, they ran a race on wedge issues. Issues that divide us. Issues, that if we were allowed to enter into a rational debate on them, could draw us closer and ultimately we might be able to find compromise. The Republican party as it is, is diseased, sick with power, and will not compromise. They are deluded with their own belief in their rightness. Not that they believe what they preach, but they are sick with the power and greed that they rail against. They live in their gated communities that block out the "riff raff." In that "riff raff," lies the American electorate. Red States blinded by "moral" issues that cause them to vote against their own economic interests. Their vote against abortion, gay marriage, and the percieved notion that Democrats are going to take away thier guns, is a vote against their jobs remaining at home. A vote against Social Security being solvent when they retire. A vote against their public schools being fully funded. The right has convinced middle America that their tax money is being wasted, and in some ways they are right, but their idea of tax reform hands the biggest tax cuts to the people who need it the least. The fantasy that it will all work out, will be dashed when in order to have the most cursory government functioning, like police and fire, garbage pickup, they will find that they are the ones who are picking up the tab. Middle America, who is swimming in government subsidies that are far more than the taxes that they actually pay into the federal coffers, will be in shock when their schools begin to close down. They will be left without the one way out that they have come to rely on.
I do believe that we can do this and bailing out on our democratic system is not the way to do it. Yes, change has to come and soon. We cannot afford to let all that we have fought for be taken away by a party that no longer can win on issues. We cannot afford to let this diseased party control our government and suppress the freedoms that belong to us all. We need to define freedom and liberty, as our liberal/progressive heritage does. We need to take our country back and it will not be without a fight. The fight begins now. The struggle begins now. The struggle to save the last bastion of democracy on this earth.
I would hope that when jobs in the Heartland are finally sent all overseas to countries that barely pay their workers a living wage and have not even a glint of worker protections, that they would see that the current administration could give two shits about them.
With the inability to win on important issues facing this country, they ran a race on wedge issues. Issues that divide us. Issues, that if we were allowed to enter into a rational debate on them, could draw us closer and ultimately we might be able to find compromise. The Republican party as it is, is diseased, sick with power, and will not compromise. They are deluded with their own belief in their rightness. Not that they believe what they preach, but they are sick with the power and greed that they rail against. They live in their gated communities that block out the "riff raff." In that "riff raff," lies the American electorate. Red States blinded by "moral" issues that cause them to vote against their own economic interests. Their vote against abortion, gay marriage, and the percieved notion that Democrats are going to take away thier guns, is a vote against their jobs remaining at home. A vote against Social Security being solvent when they retire. A vote against their public schools being fully funded. The right has convinced middle America that their tax money is being wasted, and in some ways they are right, but their idea of tax reform hands the biggest tax cuts to the people who need it the least. The fantasy that it will all work out, will be dashed when in order to have the most cursory government functioning, like police and fire, garbage pickup, they will find that they are the ones who are picking up the tab. Middle America, who is swimming in government subsidies that are far more than the taxes that they actually pay into the federal coffers, will be in shock when their schools begin to close down. They will be left without the one way out that they have come to rely on.
I do believe that we can do this and bailing out on our democratic system is not the way to do it. Yes, change has to come and soon. We cannot afford to let all that we have fought for be taken away by a party that no longer can win on issues. We cannot afford to let this diseased party control our government and suppress the freedoms that belong to us all. We need to define freedom and liberty, as our liberal/progressive heritage does. We need to take our country back and it will not be without a fight. The fight begins now. The struggle begins now. The struggle to save the last bastion of democracy on this earth.
