UPDATE: Jane Hamsher expands on the blame-the-progressives mentality specifically in the healthcare reform context. This is well worth a read.
Original post follows.
Your Left... your Left... you always start out on your Left...
Greenwald reflects on the degree and frequency with which everyone... the Obama administration, his enthusiastic supporters, the Party regulars, you name it... blames 'The Left' for everything that has gone wrong since at least the middle of this administration, and often enough since before.
Excuuuuse me?
I am always amazed to find myself listed as part of that Left. I mean, in high school, I won the D.A.R. Anti-Communist Essay Contest, and read the essay aloud before wildly cheering crowds at a high school that was, in retrospect, far right-of-center. If I am part of "The Left," that's news to me. But it's news that a lot of pundits and a few blog trolls seem intent on repeating until it's widely believed.
Leftist? Huh?
And yet, if one insists that the comparison is with the genuine nut-cases... the Tea-Baggers, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, etc. etc., well, yes, I suppose I am to the left of those people... after all, who isn't.
But make no mistake: the Democratic Party abandoned me, not the other way around. And I was their base. I had been a Democrat in fact for about 40 years, and a Democrat in registration (and contributions) for about 30. What did it profit them to insult me to the point that I stopped claiming membership?
I am at a point of abandoning party politics altogether. The fact that I, who once called himself The Yellow Doggerel Democrat, am about to abandon ship should give some people pause to think. But nobody within the Obama administration, no one among the Blue Dogs, etc., will pause for a moment if I leave the party I've advocated for the last three decades. Why should I stay? Right: I shouldn't.
The Tea-Baggers, unrequested, added me to their mailing list, apparently perceiving statements like the one above as a reversal of political outlook. Sorry, folks; fuck that shit. I am, indeed, The Left, compared to today's formally constituted Democratic Party. And I don't like that one bit. I'm where I am because I have nowhere else to go.
Read Greenwald, as linked above. And contemplate whether you have any place to go. I do not like being party-less. But I have no intention of once again, for the dozenth time, being dragged kicking and screaming along with people like Rahm Emanuel into a party that has not, for a decade or so, represented my real political positions. Enough is enough. Call me part of The Left if you must... I don't give a fuck.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
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Yep, I'm just another leftist hippie, just like every other small business owner, former cop, and military veteran - the typical radical.
ReplyDeleteBryan, it's ironic how DFHs have changed since our college days... ironic but not really all that surprising. On the whole, peace activists are a principled bunch of people. Likewise, for the most part, cops and military officers are principled people. In the political arena, anyone operating from his or her honest principles seems to be labeled by opponents as part of The Left these days, so we all get lumped in together. What do we do now? must we all drink a toast to Stalin? %->
ReplyDeleteSteve, I feel the same way. I've been a Yellow Dog all my life and I feel abandoned. Yet there seem to be a few of us out here in cyberland....but not many in DC.
ReplyDeleteCanada is not that far away. Unfortunately, England is not accepting people who want to retire there at this time.
ReplyDeleteItaly, on the other hand...I hear it's fairly simple to go there...
Welcome, Anonymous! And thanks for commiserating. I feel lousy about how things have turned out; I didn't want to be set adrift politically at this stage in my life. (BTW, I respect your anonymity, but give us a pseudonym so we'll have something to call you in discussion threads... thanks!)
ReplyDeleteMoi, it's good to see you in these parts. I hope it doesn't come to that. I suppose if we ended up with Dick Cheney as the resident Dick-tator (ahem) running a government like, say, Germany in 1939, I'd leave, but I still have hopes it won't come to that. Fight first; leave only if necessary. Damn, it's depressing, though...
ReplyDeleteI have no energy to fight. Got an autistic kid, no students to speak of...Most of my family is gone. I got nuthin to stay here for.
ReplyDeleteWhat happened to Howard Dean LAST year? He threw Hillary under the bus. And how we are stuck with Fuckhead. The man who was responsible for my starting to blog threw ALL of us under the bus. For what? He got stabbed in the back, too!
I don't like being party-less either. But what do we go TO?
Greenwald is wrong. By voting Obama in, that was a Given that we wouldn't get Universal. We who worked for Hillary TOLD you his ass was vague. People talked all around us "oh he means this or that" which was such TOTAL BS.
I feel like Whoopi Goldberg in Rat Race. Guess we "Should have bought a squirrel"....instead, we bought a Rat.
Moi, you do have some serious challenges facing you. I don't have terrible negative feelings toward Obama, but he is far too cautious... and malleable by his advisers... to be the strong president we need right now. Yes, Hillary was my first choice (and Stella's as well, as she reminded me yesterday), but face it, Obama's campaign was better organized than hers. What do we hope for in 2012? Personally, I'm just hoping that Sarah Palin gets caught in bed with Joe the Plumber or a fundamentalist preacher... or both at once :-) ... before another quirk of fate makes her our next president.
ReplyDelete