The lunatic fringes that rail against all things Obama or all things progressive can really get a person down. But sooner or later they will most likely be dying off in droves because they are aging fast. They just don't seem to understand the younger generations have a whole different take on how things should be. Think Gay marriage here.
At the same time younger generations need to ramp up some real civil disobedience to address the great right wing tilt of our congress. It will happen when the division of wealth in this country widens even more, if that is possible. I hope I am around to see it.
The actions of the President yesterday to push back on immigration might signal the start of a great push back. It is the kind of fight that might just get the republicans into a corner and force them to become the moderates they once were.
At the same time younger generations need to ramp up some real civil disobedience to address the great right wing tilt of our congress. It will happen when the division of wealth in this country widens even more, if that is possible. I hope I am around to see it.
The actions of the President yesterday to push back on immigration might signal the start of a great push back. It is the kind of fight that might just get the republicans into a corner and force them to become the moderates they once were.
3 comments:
Your far way too optimistic to think that there will every be moderate Republicans again. Six years ago, when the President won and the House and Senate was controlled by the Democrats, all pundits predicted the demise of the Republican party and how it would never recover from the losses. During the last six years, the Republicans got far more conservative, the tea party came into being and Republicans started winning Governorships big time and now control both the US Seanate and House. It is now the Democrats who are the endangered party and the Republicans only get more conservative while our middle class is becomming smaller and smaller and paying the majority of the taxes. On the National scene, Hillary Clinton seems unstoppable to become the Democratic nominee for President with way too much reliance and emphasis being made that she will some how save the Democratic Party. The Republicans will nominate a right wing Republican for President, and with the Citizens United ruling, the money spent by Republicans will be absoltely staggering and not even Hillary Clinton will be able to keep up.
That's a really great post.
And a great comment by Anonymous.
Both accurately portray the path we're on. It's in what will happen further on down the road that they differ. Will the forces of evil finally find a way to keep the masses under control? Or will there be enough pressure put on Capitalism to force it to adapt to that pressure?
In the past, there have always been uprisings. If not revolutions, the masses, at least a significant enough number of them, managed to get it together well enough to push back and bring about change.
But now we've got unlimited money and pervasive technology. Wacko, Rush Limbaugh, tea bagger Conservatism is fully entrenched in the Republican Party. With its gerrymandering, its media, its money, its got itself set up to hold out for a long time.
I've been more and more pessimistic lately. I'm pretty demoralized about human nature. If the humans I'm exposed to nightly up and down I-40 are any indication, it's spiraling downward.
But really, human nature doesn't change. We're the same species we always were, when we were beheading each other during the Middle Ages and burning witches and lynching Black men in United States, and when we were cooperating to oppose Capitalism and its imperial wars or to oppose racism and sexism.
The potential for both good and evil exist in us all the time, and for submission and resistance, it's just which is brought to the surface.
Things can change overnight. Occupy, the Arab Spring. Dictators gone, wealth and income inequality suddenly on everyone's minds. Sometimes it just takes a trigger.
As pervasive as the money gets and as the NSA gets, as dark as it seems, the people will catch up. We'll figure it out. Some kids will hack into the NSA itself.
John F Kennedy's inauguration speech may well have been the trigger that started the 60s movements. Kennedy was no revolutionary, no great friend of African Americans, and he expanded the Vietnam War, but his words inspired people and expanded their ideas about what was possible. He increased what was conceivable, then the people did their own thing.
Jim may be on to something, in seeing the possibilities for change in the current, dark moment and in predicting what form it might take. As much as I'd like to see the revolution come, and will continue to agitate for it, change, for now at least, will probably be along the lines it's been in the past. And President Obama on the face of it seemed to have little to gain by going in the face of Republicans, but he's a smart guy. He might be looking down the road at what the future electorate will be. He may have selfish motives, too. The 2016 election and how it will affect his legacy. Or, he might have triggered something in spite of himself.
When George W. Bush left office and Obama became President and the Democrats controlled both the Senate and House, I was praying that at last America voters finally woke up and we would have decades of progressive governance and middle class exapansion. The Democrats overplayed their hand with universal heath care (Obama Care), failed to address job creation in any realistic manner such as mass investment in infrastucture, roads, bridges ect., gave comprehensive immigration reform nothing but lip service. It was as if Obama was set up for failure with the economy and ending Bush's two wars. Now, its the right wing conservatives who will rule or govern for decades. I sure hope I am wrong, but have no faith Hillary Clinton nor Jeb Bush will be a good President, only another divisive President.
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