DirkGently
DirkGently's JournalIt's not people saying it that make parties "the same."
It's the parties' actions that are too often the same.
What's being sold by an unfortunate faction of our own party is the idea that mildly less oppressive social policy is the only area open for debate. Fiscal policy; taxation; ownership; regulation of business -- that is intended to be taken off the table forever, the decisions made for us by the "real" constituency of our political leaders -- namely billionaires able to write unlimited campaign checks.
We are being dragged, an inch at a time, toward open ownership of government by monied private interests. This is where we get the sudden surge of wisdom that SS and Medicare are unsustainable, that home ownership and retirement benefits are not realistic expectations for working people in the days ahead. That maybe we don't even own small things like automobiles or computer programs or audio / visual content that we buy.
Everything will be a license, a lease -- a temporary right to exist, subject to the whims and greed of the real owners.
We are being dragged toward a 21st century serfdom, and too many of the people elected by us, funded by us, who exist and have power only through the sufferance of the people, have decided that things just don't work that way, and that elections simply determine who will be working for the financial firms and energy giants for the next little while.
It's not going to work, but the longer it goes on, the uglier the backlash will be.
The Overton Window is so far right in this country
that anything mildly pro-worker or pro-equality is immediately labeled -- and not only by Republicans, we should note -- as "far left."
We had a local kerfuffle recently where a moderately progressive Democratic caucus took issue with a proposed Senate candidate whose signature initiative had been all about the need for "structural changes" to Social Security and Medicare, based on the usual complete lies Wall Street keeps pushing, which D.C. insiders have accepted as gospel. A "moderate" position, he said.
Maybe we should revive the real far left. Gin up some efforts to nationalize banks, cap private corporation's salaries, that sort of thing. Give the people in both parties a stalking horse so they can understand that things like a minimum wage and the most basic banking regulations aren't akin to "Marxism" and whatnot.
"Rare" was a mistaken concession we must retract.
In trying to triangulate a working compromise with people who have no interest in reasonable discussion, we were led to believe the "rare" language was to be about reducing teenage pregnancy with rational measures like intelligent sex education and access to birth control.
Instead, it was taken as a concession that abortion is evil, and the same factions Clinton was trying to appease promptly set about a regime of "abstinence only" education and conflating birth control with "abortifacients."
All along, we were dealing with people with zero concern for women's health or privacy, who at bottom just want to ensure sex = pregnancy = punishment for women.
We need to clarify forcefully and repeatedly:
"Safe, legal, and ON DEMAND"
Hurting people is not a religion.
"Conscience clauses" use the same sick inversion of logic -- to permit people to hurt those they irrationally hate -- over and again.
They need to go, as do the "Religious Freedom Restoration Act" used to justify Hobby Lobby and every similar law.
Everyone's religious "freedom" ends at abusing or discriminating against others who don't share your views. The fact that a few demented people think their metaphysical belief system puts them in charge of everyone else's sex lives notwithstanding.
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Gender: MaleHometown: Orlando
Home country: USA
Current location: Holistically detecting
Member since: Wed Jan 27, 2010, 04:59 PM
Number of posts: 12,151
