I’ve been an incurable political junkie for about ten years now, maybe twelve. For the past five years I’ve spent six-to-twelve hours a day reading or writing about politics, almost every single day. If you haven’t done that, you can’t imagine what the experience is like. It’s total immersion. I should have more than one Ph.D in political science by now. I have learned a tremendous amount about how politics works in this country. And the media. The number one lesson I’ve taken away from it all is that you should hate the vast majority of elected officials and members of the media in this country. I know that is depressing to hear, but it’s the truth. But I have a second lesson.
Once you learn to give up on almost all your heroes and all the people you think might change things for the better, you’ll overcome your cynicism. You’ll realize that you were wrong to think so highly of most of these people but that your instincts were right about who you should be pulling for. Total immersion in American politics will ween you of your idealism, but if you’ve watched what happens to politicians once they’ve been in Washington DC for a while this should come as no surprise to you. Yet, once you’ve lost that youthful and innocent burst of enthusiasm and you’ve digested your disappointment, you’ll get to another level where you begin to understand how progress actually occurs within this system (and how it can be thwarted).
And heroes will begin to emerge again. Heroes like Henry Waxman who fought valiantly for decades against Big Tobacco, or John Dingell who has introduced a universal health care bill every year for over half a century. If you look at them too closely you’ll see some unsightly warts. Waxman voted to authorize the war in Iraq and Dingell has been an opponent of environmental regulations. But the real heroes in Washington are the ones that keep up the fight, year after year, until they finally begin to deliver. They learn to be patient and take their progress piecemeal. They cut deals that infuriate their biggest supporters. But they keep moving the ball down the field.
If you think about it, this is how all the great reformers have accomplished their goals. It was true of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., and it’s true of the people that have won rights for women and gays. If you live in the moment, you’ll find good reason to hate these people. But if you take the long view, things are much less hopeless than they seem.
“The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.”
So…that means health care will pass, and it will be shitty now, but better later? 🙂
Could be.
Not your point here, but this is why I tend to make only a few snarky comments in these threads. I haven’t the knowledge to make more intelligent ones.
But I can always read informed and intelligent posts here.
“The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” I don’t know, BooMan, if the people of Vietnam, Guatemala, Honduras, Iraq, Afghanistan would agree with you. They might regard the United States of America as a nation which, for sake of riches and power, threatens their well being and safety. Many native americans might also share these views.
The final chapter on the story of America has not been written. Perhaps, we shall have a better view if and when the dollar crumbles and the crazies on the right decide to follow or not the man or woman on the horse using our ABC weapons to maintain our hegemony by thermonuclear and biological blackmail. If that sorry scenario plays out, our nation will rank among the worst the world has ever seen, not the best as our current and past mythology would have it.
Martin Luther King Jr. said that.
It is a sign of real intelligence to see that kind of truth, and as “downtrodden” as was MLK Jr….I mean, how much more downtrodden does it get than a bullet in the head?…if he could speak directly to us now I am sure that he would say the same thing.
The word “justice” in this sense is a synonym for evolution, and it is an undeniable fact that we are evolving. Life is evolving, as it has always evolved in this universe. Not in a straight line, but ever forward.
Believe it.
Or not, as you must.
Yup.
AG
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Einstein was right, NASA Gravity Probe B shows"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."“And heroes will begin to emerge again. Heroes like Henry Waxman who fought valiantly for decades against Big Tobacco, or John Dingell who has introduced a universal health care bill every year for over half a century. If you look at them too closely you’ll see some unsightly warts. Waxman voted to authorize the war in Iraq and Dingell has been an opponent of environmental regulations. But the real heroes in Washington are the ones that keep up the fight, year after year, until they finally begin to deliver. They learn to be patient and take their progress piecemeal. They cut deals that infuriate their biggest supporters. But they keep moving the ball down the field.”
do you think you could apply your feelings to kucinich whom i think really deserves it?
“But the real heroes in Washington are the ones that keep up the fight, year after year, until they finally begin to deliver. They learn to be patient and take their progress piecemeal. They cut deals that infuriate their biggest supporters. But they keep moving the ball down the field.”
I don’t think that Kucinich fits this mold. My frustration with him has always been that he sees the good as the enemy of the perfect. He seems to have no interest in moving that ball down the field.
I’ve been a political junkie for something like 30 years (blush), and I would echo these sentiments, and offer a corollary. There’s a similar arc over time of idealism, cynicism, and cautious hope around ordinary citizens’ ability to effect change in this country. It’s often (though not always) the force that winds up moving the goalposts in the right direction.
“The People” don’t always win, and we may not be a sufficient force to save humanity from the multiple crises facing us. But if we don’t try, we rarely win.
Thanks for these thoughts. I don’t have your knowledge of politics but I had the good fortune to be raised by people who managed to rise above the genuine cesspools into which they were born to accomplish some good in this world, and who surrounded themselves with like people. a concept of what is possible, from studying what others have accomplished and how they did it, and what they were up against helps.
Your post is helpful, or at least encouraging. In a very small way, I worked to help elect Obama. I am very disappointed.
Whether it was Rick Warren at the inauguration to the appointment of Geithner to DoJ continuing to argue the Bush line in Federal court houses, to the handling of the bailout, it seems as if the USA is still going backwards on every front.
Meaningful health insurance reform and global warming both appear to be history.
Random rules for observing politics:
DINGELL? I’m sorry. Health care is as dust before the continued existence of sentient life in this universe. Those are the stakes with climate change.
I am sympathetic to your views in general. I am, but the problem this time is that we are just about if not already, out of time to fix these issues so incrementalism will only make things worse or be ineffectual. It’s no good if you reach the other guys’ 10 if you’ve run out of clock time.
Too True. Our greed has screwed us up big time. If only the middle-of-the-road climate scenarios actually come to pass, half-a-century from now Earth will have a carrying capacity of 2 billion people. The difference between that and the currently projected 9 billion people by that time is a whopping 7 BILLION PEOPLE – who will need to not be. Oh sure, lots of them will be in the under 5yo age group (and most of those dark-skinned), and they’re rarely well armed – but their parents are another matter.
The Polar bears will die quietly (except for eating other Polar bears), but humans have a nasty habit of going all Dr. Strangelove when faced with the prospect of their individual and tribal extinction. Starvation, privation, and (nuclear) armed conflict. I’m so looking forward to it. But hey, how about that new tech gadget? Spiffy, huh.
p.s. I don’t see “justice” as an arc tending either way. Lets face it, after 5000 years of patriarchy you’d thinks women wouldn’t still be “OTHER” if incremental change was inevitable.
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(Washington Post) – Congress savaged him. Wall Street Journal editorials doubted him. His home-town buddies urged him to use the money to buy the Cleveland Browns and fire the coaches. His wife spoke to him so rarely, she described them as “dead to each other.” He lost sleep, gained weight and saw a close adviser, Don Hammond, suffer a heart attack at his Treasury desk. On May 1, after serving seven months under Presidents Bush and Obama, he resigned.
Within a week, Kashkari and his wife put their belongings into “indefinite storage.” They moved to a cabin near the Truckee River in Northern California. “Off the map,” he told his friends. He threw away his business cards, and made a list of the things he wanted to do …
BooMan seeks path in opposite direction from Cabin to Washington?"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Nice pics, Oui. Booman would enjoy those Newfie photos.
I had a friend that went that route. He ended up in Sacramento.
I was raised to believe that heroes emerged and that the masses along with great leaders could and would succeed. The problem is that now the masses really don’t see beyond themselves and they seek no information beyond that which they are fed.
All of the movements you mentioned included huge numbers of “regular” people standing side by side with the heroes of the day and marching, protesting and in all ways making thier prescence known.
– ML
Thank god for Brian Lamb and Tim Berners-Lee. Heroes will emerge when they are needed, not necessarily in Congress. The creation of “a progressive community” is a needed heroic act, and I’m grateful for it.
I still think Obama is a hero. I get impatient with him a lot, but that’s my problem. The man did say “I can’t do it alone!”