Hey, Matt Taibbi seems to have finally wised up about the biggest threat facing our country, which isn’t, by the way, that we’ve suddenly become ruled by a bunch of powerful corporate interests.
I’m beginning to wonder why effective boycotts against these hate-media channels, and particularly Fox, haven’t been organized yet. Why not just pick out one Fox advertiser at random and make an example out of it? How about Subaru and their unintentionally comic “Love” slogan? I actually like their cars, but what the fuck? How about Pep Boys and that annoying logo of theirs? Just to prove that it can be done, I’d like to see at least one firm get blown out of business as a consequence of financially supporting the network that is telling America that its black president wants to kill white babies. Isn’t that at least the first move here? It’s beginning to strike me that sitting by and doing nothing about this madness is not a terribly responsible way to behave.
Well, yes, it is all fine and dandy to be disappointed that our bought-and-sold Congress isn’t particularly dedicated to jailing their financial benefactors, but it is kind of a misallocation of resources to focus exclusively on those shortcomings when a nativist, xenophobic, homophobic movement is poised to make tremendous political gains in our county. The biggest blind spot on the left isn’t a failure to recognize foreign enemies, it’s a failure to recognize domestic ones. When people on the left begin to understand the nature of the beast that Barack Obama defeated, hopefully, they will begin to marshall their energy towards keeping that beast down instead of arguing about why we haven’t reached Scandinavian levels of progressivism in the last twenty months.
Obama’s coalition is still the majority and the future of this country. And maintaining that coalition, including its centrist elements, is still our only bulwark against a new form of fascism based in racial, religious, and jingoistic values.
well said
Man Booman, you’ve been on fire. Freakin awesome post.
And Matt’s rant is excellent too.
Well said !!
Matt Taibi has a good idea. Focus on one or two companies to begin with. FOCUS is the word. EVERYBODY working TOGETHER.
Can the Netroots do some coordination, and with many of the most popular bloggers singing the same tune, it could WORK.
WHO can take the lead ? WHO can organize a conference call of the different progressive organisations and the most prominent bloggers ?
That’s why it’s stupid for certain bloggers to get into pissing matches.
Taibbi is still a tool 🙂
Oh well, nice post, and here’s an appropriate video:
Anyone who is familiar with the history of Nazi Germany–the early history, before the Second World War, that is–has seen this movie before and has a queasy feeling about what is coming.
Let me spell it out: The Nazis never got anywhere until they got bigtime–and I mean bigtime–corporate support. To oversimplify, the largest German corporations saw the Nazis as the solution to their labor problems, and, well, you have read about the rest.
The Nazis went through many changes in their early years, but once the corporate money started flowing in, Hitler understood the Nazi’s role and purpose and arranged to carry it out: To play upon and inflame the anger of the German people, to find plausible but helpless targets (scapegoats is the technically correct term) for that anger, in order to deliver the German people into corporate hands–that is, dupe them into supporting the same corporate policies that were exploiting them.
With the help of the newly-developing technology of propaganda this all worked. Hitler’s inspired raving against plutocrats was very popular. He saw no need to mention he was being funded by them.
What does this have to do with the US today? The hate that we see being stirred up by the right wing media–a far more elaborate propaganda machine than those of Nazi times–is scripted and funded by the large corporations. The anger of Tea Party members is real–and why wouldn’t it be: The have been cheated, robbed, and abandoned. But the Tea Party itself is a corporate entity: Its job is to inflame anger while diverting it away from the corporations that have done the cheating and robbing, and toward helpless scapegoat groups. The Tea Party is doing this now, and it certainly this seems to be working.
What Taibbi is suggesting is not a strategy, but a tactic–though it may be a good one. It assumes that there is a split in the powers that be–a fairly safe bet–and seeks to drive a wedge between the ones that want to create a popular fascist party and the ones that don’t, at least not yet, by raising the cost of creating it. Advertisers who are not dedicated to the agenda of a popular fascist party will pull out if revenues are hit, and the dedicated–or fanatics, if you will–will have to put in more of their own funds.
So far, so good.
I would agree with these words, yet I doubt we agree at all, for:
Obama did not defeat anything, certainly not the Beast. He is the Beast–more precisely, its mask. He has done nothing but assiduously carry out the corporate agenda the whole time he has been in office–from expanding the wars throughout the world to bailing out of the largest and most corrupt banks. Also, perhaps a small thing, he has punked the left, who in their shock and horror cannot believe they have been betrayed (but come on, people, how could it have been otherwise) just as Baby Bush rode in on the hopes of the right and then betrayed them. This is the Beast at work.
Shall I spell it out? The Beast is thinking of getting a new mask. When Obama has done all he can do for it, then it will be time for a change. The Tea Party perhaps? The left needs to understand it is watching a Kabuki theater–the script is already written. By throwing eggs at the right actors at the right times we might slow the charade down, but the logic of events is the logic of an empire in terminal decline. Terminal is the key word here: The resource base for an industrial society is gone, and the industry itself is gone as well. The powers that be have no plan but to loot out as much as they can as fast as they can, and then hope to ride the crash down with some sort of technical/surveillance/propaganda and mercenary/weaponry base that will maintain them as feudal overlords.
The sneering at Sweden is unseemly, for, though they are entering their own troubles, they achieved a level of economic and social justice that the US never aspired to, and will not achieve now.
Progressives have always depended upon a benign government to carry out their agenda. What happens when the government turns malign? In fact, the national government is malign right now–due not to socialism (gah!) but to the fact that it is owned by the corporate powers. Until progressives recognize this and find non-government means to advance their values, progressivism is dead in the water–and sinking.
All national politics is rearguard–at best, fighting retreat. Fighting retreat is useful and should be done, but should not be mistaken for strategy. The tactic Taibbi is proposing is a good one.
Great comment, worthy of a post in its own right.
Small quibble – Booman isn’t sneering at Sweden. US Progressives are envious of what was achieved in Scandinavia – or Canada.
One point of disagreement: Democracy – if it could be made to work – is still a core strategy for Progressives. Abandoning the fight for Control of Government to corporate interests destroys any chance of progressive change because all other potentially progressive organisations – Unions, Community Activist groups, Arts collectives etc. – are all too easily marginalised, especially when unemployment is hight and ordinary people have trouble putting bread on the table..
Fighting corporatism in Government isn’t a tactic – it has to be the core of any progressive strategy. Countering corporate bribery of politicians and control of the media are key parts of that strategy.
I’m definitely not sneering at Sweden. I’m telling progressives to get their heads out of their asses because it’s election time. And to stop crying that America is a right-wing biased country. We’re doing very well on social policy and will have a great record by 2012. Economic and foreign policy? A huge improvement over our predecessors and any conceivable alternative, but still shitty. But show me a country in history that hasn’t been dominated politically by the richest people in that country. That’s nothing new. Our job isn’t to change the nature of power, it’s to get that power contained and tamed enough that most of us can benefit. Our power leaders have been on a feeding frenzy for too long and look at the beast they’ve created in their misguided effort to eat everything!
I had an old and very conservative Poli Sci professor who used to tell us, “Of course your nation is ruled by an elite. Every nation is! The common people only get to sneak in part of their agenda when there is contention in the elite.” Roosevelt did this by forming a coalition with the voters over the heads of the economic royalists. Obama has formed a coalition with the economic royalists over the heads of the voters. Yes, it has produced some results that are much better than the Republicans would have, but I can’t project that we “will have a great record by 2012,” from where we stand now. It’s still very much in play.
For that reason, I do very much agree that an absolutely crucial part of building ‘a great record by 2012′ is to turn our fire away from our underachieving Democrats toward the nation’s real enemies: Republican office holders who really don’t care what happens to the nation, the lumpen-fascists, and their abettors in the national media. There’s an election on. Time’s a-wastin’.
I agree with your conclusion but I think you’re guilty of ahistorical reasoning. FDR charted a center-left course, too. The difference is that, back then, the country (and the world) was being roiled by extreme left-wing agitation. Very few liberals of the time were satisfied with FDR’s domestic or economic program or teams. For just one example, let’s look at who FDR chose for his first Treasury Secretary:
Can’t you hear Jane Hamsher and David Sirota’s heads exploding as the new great hope and supposed liberal president chooses a Republican industrialist to head the Treasury Department?
History can play tricks on you. Rich people rule our world, always have, and always will. That’s not the important part of politics. That’s the given under which all political action operates.
Woodlin didn’t come from the stock churners who had just crashed the stock market. He came from the productive sector, which FDR was trying to revive, so everyone could get back to work. Tim Geithner came from precisely the company most responsible for crashing the market.
I have nothing against contrarian appointments – if they accomplish their purpose. FDR’s contrarians were perhaps best exemplified by appointing stock churner Joe Kennedy to head the SEC – setting the fox to guard the henhouse. The difference is that Kennedy did a great job forwarding a center-left agenda of regulation of stock trading. I don’t see any evidence that Geithner has served any useful purpose once his presence stopped the panic on Wall Street. What has he done for me lately?
Geithner doesn’t come from a company. He never worked for Goldman Sachs or any other major financial company. His only private sector experience is his decades-old work for Kissinger Associates.
I agree that he should be replaced, but that was also true of FDR’s first pick for the job.
My error. Geithner was just at the Fed in New York enabling all of the outrages, not at G-S committing them.
Correct.
But it should be noted that the number of people ‘enabling’ the fraud on Wall Street includes our entire Congress and all of our government’s relevant regulatory agencies.
Agreed. Very much including “moderate” Democrats like Bill Clinton and “liberal” Republicans like Jim Leach, along with the usual “conservatives” like Phil Gramm and Tom Bliley.
Well a 1934 Hamsher (or probably any of about a dozen current cranky blogger Kennedy skeptics) likely would have exploded, loudly, over that Jos P. Kennedy appointment much more than they might have expressed disappointment over a mere Woodin at Treasury.
Fortunately, however, JPK was much more concerned about not living up to low published expectations and doing the right thing for the country with this new agency.
You are just bolstering my point.
I think I meant to. But I also think it’s possible that the lefty blogger types would have been wrong in Roosevelt’s time if they bellyached but not as wrong today as we watch an Obama who, compared to FDR, seems a little less inclined to change course, experiment, go for the bold unexpected stroke either in policy or personnel.
Maybe. But I think you have to remember that a fundamental difference between FDR and BHO’s first two years is that FDR had much greater majorities. Dems controlled nearly 72% of the House after 1932. In the Senate, Dems had 60 seats like today, but there were only 95 seats total. And because much of the Democratic party was anchored in the South, FDR didn’t have to deal with the automatic filibuster requirement on most issues, as BHO does today. So in a way you can look at the Dems in 1932 as having had 15 more seats in the Senate than they do today.
The bottom line is that FDR was more experimental than BHO has been in large part because he had much greater majorities (which of course were expanded even further in the 1934 election).
Sorry, my bad. Looks like there were 96 Senate seats in 1932 (obviously, since each state gets two). One of the Minnesota seats was held by Henrik Shipstead of the Farmer-Labor party, who was apparently a progressive on domestic/economic issues, and otherwise an extreme foreign policy isolationist.
No question FDR had more wiggle room in Congress in which to act boldly in the economic area. He also came to office following 3 hard grim years of Depression, and so people were expecting big major change for the better and sooner rather than later. Obama came in several months after the financial crisis with a smaller Dem majority and not quite the same wide-open room to maneuver as FDR.
That said, people who voted O, 53% of voters, did expect him to come through on his promise of Change, and with unemployment still at 9.5% and the economy flat, are not going to be in the mood to hear excuses about needing 60 votes. They expect at least a sincere attempt at getting robust economic/financial reform legislation done, and would credit O even if that effort fell short.
(Note here, even some of his most fervent 2008 backers, including those who’ve largely backed him fully during the tough 2009 year, are now coming around to acknowledge that O needs to do more, and quickly. See, e.g., Bob Shrum, at The Week.)
Finally, I think there’s a temperament-confidence difference between the two. The very self-confident and experienced FDR much more inclined to experiment, and boldly, by nature; the less confident and barely experienced O more likely to stick with orthodox remedies from the usual establishment advisors.
This is a well-considered argument. But do you honestly believe that Obama and his Congressional allies have not made a sincere attempt at passing robust economic/financial reform legislation?
Sincere maybe, but too timid in his vision, too willing to accept major compromise and at too early a stage in the proceedings.
Re : But do you honestly believe that Obama and his Congressional allies have not made a sincere attempt at passing robust economic/financial reform legislation?
My answer is the same as you’d get from Krugman and Stieglitz : Obama has not been nearly aggressive enough on jobs , banking reform or economic stimulus .
Obama is doing the functional equivalent of fighting our economic decline from a foxhole ,i.e., from a defensive position -as opposed to commanding the battlefield. And worst still , Obama has either chosen or been assigned an economic team ,whose chief skill-set for reviving the economy ,appears to be ,at best, making the foxhole deeper -if not converting it into a ditch .
Though it’s possible some of the lefty bloggers of that time (perhaps not Hamsher or a Sirota) might have been at least partly relieved by Woodin, since FDR’s first choice, the more orthodox and inflation-obsessed Carter Glass, a conservative in-house Dem Party financial expert, turned down FDR, probably after getting back word that Roosevelt didn’t share his overwrought concerns about inflation.
Can we please move past the Nazi Germany analogy!!? Hitler came to power almost 100 years ago in a country that had been ruled by nobility for hundreds of years. The analogy is just not pertinent and serves to disguise the actual issues and points of leverage – which Booman does a great job of keeping front and center for us on this blog. As far as GOTV goes the most important difference between 2010 USA and 30’s Germany is the longstanding expectation on the part of United States citizenry of representative government. This expectation is what gives progressivism forward momentum. For anyone who argues that this expectation is ill-founded or impossible to realize, well ok, in many places in the world that may be the case, it just doesn’t apply in the USA.
the corporate state. Many big players invested in it, including–not coincidentally–Prescott Bush father and grandfather of two recent American Presidents.
Nazi successes as well as failures are thoroughly studied by those interested in implementing corporate power. Those who would impede the corporatists ought to pay attention as well.
You think you have nothing to learn from Germany because it was an aberration? Think again. It was not an aberration–American PR to the contrary–and there is plenty to learn. Not least you should look at how clueless the German left was and how easily they were swept away. Plenty the 21st century American left could learn from that.
there is much history to be learned from; – I just don’t think the circumstances in 2010 USA resemble those of 20’s and 30’s Germany to spend time on that analogy – The differences outweigh any similarities, the principal difference being that the founding of the USA was about citizen participation and gov by the people. all of us progressives agree with the teabaggers about that, of course we differ considerably in our diagnosis of the present ills and of our remedies. The Nazi Germany analogy deserves to be retired.
German left?
Just sayin’ . . .
Fine idea. The Obama White House could have fired the first salvo by NOT giving Fox a front row seat in the press room. I must be the one who is missing a screw. The Cat Food Commission is also great. Obama does not inspire resistance to the beast because he seems tepeatedly to be appeasing, coddling it. That’s the problem, I’d say.
Small point: It’s my understanding that the White House Correspondents Association, not the Obama White House, controls the seating at the White House press room.
Larger point: Criticizing Obama for “appeasing” and “coddling” his opponents is, in my view, like criticizing Jackie Robinson in 1947 for not charging the mound at every pitcher who threw at him, or spiking every infielder who used racial slurs against him. In the world in which we live, Obama doesn’t have the option of taking the high road or the low road; because he’s “The First”, he’s got to take the high road.
My bad, the first one. The second one: baseball analogies, however commonly made, are not useful because Obama is not playing baseball, he’s in politics. As far as I can see, a slightly more confontational stance would take him a long way to maintaining majorities in Congress. The way he’s going he’ll be going nowhere in the next two years and he’s leading us there with him.
oh good – blame Obama. and any poster who argues that we can’t do anything about it, I suspect of being a right wing troll.
What a silly thing to say.
ppl said the same thing about St. Paul
Quentin, thanks for the thoughtful and courteous response.
I think the two key factors in the November elections are 1) the president’s party almost always loses seats in midterm elections, and 2) 10% unemployment with minimal income growth is bad for the party in power. (Third factor is Democrats won a lot of seats the last two elections and were almost certainly bound to lose some seats anyway.)
I think Obama being slightly more or less confrontational would likely have a slight impact at the margins (not to say margins aren’t important, just to say it’s more likely the difference between losing, say, 30 House seats and losing 33 House seats, than it is the difference between losing 30 House seats and losing none).
Finally, I do want to come back to the Jackie Robinson analogy—which I meant more as a “First One” analogy than a baseball analogy. In my experience, almost anytime someone is “The First” (black president, female governor, Jewish country club member, Latino/a partner in a company, etc.), that person is held to a different standard of behavior. I’m not saying that’s a good thing; I’m saying that’s the way it is.
Given that, I think the more Obama’s supporters recognize the situation and take it into account, the better off we’ll all be.
On your interesting Jackie Robinson analogy, with the obvious First One parallel, a few remarks: a) JR was a naturally fiery type who had to agree with Branch Rickey not to retaliate against provocative opponents. BHO is not naturally confrontational, but instead almost needs to be restrained by clearer-thinking pols and supporters in the party not to continue to play so softly bipartisan and to compromise so quickly. JR instinctively wanted badly to beat the opponent. Obama instinctively wants to make him his friend.
b) after the first couple of years of agreed non-confrontation, Rickey agreed to let Jackie just play ball the way he normally would, including aggressive base running and appropriate retaliation against dirty opponents. That year, 1949, probably not coincidentally also marked Robinson’s best performance as a MLBer, winning the NL’s MVP Award.
Obama still seems stuck in no-confrontation mode, though some of his rhetoric lately has gotten sharper. He’ll need to do more of course, including probably a couple of substantive moves in the economic area, in order to prevent a Dem rout this Nov.
Obama is who he is, and temperamentally he’s not Jackie Robinson. But in the meantime, working with what you have, it’s time for Obama to give his best imitation of the Jackie Robinson of 1949 — take off the gloves, come in to second with spikes high, run over the catcher trying to block home plate, do whatever is necessary w/n the rules and customs of the game to win and stop expecting your opponent to be your friend.
So it became a big issue huh…I think Obama has no say about the arrangement, someone has got to do their job.
Who remembers what happened when the White House, in the person of Anita Dunn, tried to call Fox on their bull$hit? All of the rest of the corporate media came rushing to their defense. That was a moment where a little teaching about the true nature of media power was in order. Instead, Democrats stuck their tails between their legs and scurried back to what they perceived to be safety. But does anyone think Fox and the rest of the SCLM didn’t notice how little stomach these guys have for a fight?
I sure remember it. Particularly how “the rest of the corporate media came rushing to their defense.” I hear plenty of Dems lambast Fox, but without the rest of the media echoing that theme it disappears without a ripple. Just last weekend, NPR took the “20% of Americans think Obama is a Muslim” story and, instead of making the story about precisely how that happened (which Jon Stewart has done repeatedly and precisely) they had 3:38 minutes of “however could this happen” navelgazing.
That Barack Obama defeated? Maybe. Defeated and then immediately enabled with all his might. I think it’s an open question whether the Obama coalition is still a majority. There are people he’s definitely not going to get this time around, not only on the left (small amount) but some sane GOPers won’t vote for him either not without the crisis and not after so much relentless rightwing propaganda. He’s certainly lost a number of white working class voters he had as well (you have to count them, though they aren’t the future). Taken all together it’s possible the coalition amounts of a plurality.
Anyhow, the only reason I actually wanted to comment is to say that it doesn’t actually matter if the coalition doesn’t vote. They might as well be dead for all the good they’ll do without voting.
My vote won’t count anyway, living currently in North Dakota but someone else’s might. I hope we get a reason to vote other than “Republicans are psychotic lunatics.”
I absolutely fail to get why voting to keep psychotics out of office is not compelling to some people.
I fail to understand how Obama empowered Palinites other than by simply being who he is.
I am a disabled and poor american and actually needs my country to be sweden. It is not envy. It is necessity. I think Obama and the tea baggers are just good cop/bad cop. He could stop them if he wanted to by getting the fcc to break these companies up. He just doesn’t want to. Matt is falling in to the trap of defending someone who absolutely will not return the favor.
Right, ‘who absolutely will not return the favor.’ That nicely expresses the fear and dissapointment filling the vacuum Obama is leaving behind him.
I’m interested to see the number of commenters here “arguing about why we haven’t reached Scandinavian levels of progressivism in the last twenty months” and immediately fail to recognize the “true domestic enemies” by lumping Obama with them. Obama was always center left, but he and the congressional Dems have managed to pass quite a number of progressive pieces of legislation. The Stimulus Bill alone was hugely progressive, with the full nature obscured by the fact that it was one big bill instead of a bunch of individual bills. TIME has an article on just that: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2013683,00.html?xid=huffpo-direct
The problem is that the domestic enemies, led by right wing media and echoed by too much of the MSM, drown out any voice, including the President’s, who talk about positive things that have happened. It is actually not the President’s fault that more people do not understand that he lowered their taxes, or that the Stimulus action created a large number of jobs, or that without the stimulus (and TARP et al) the deficit would be much larger. He talks about this all the time. And it is true. But the media doesn’t do “true”, they do “balance” – truth be damned. Which leaves the nation at the mercy of the expert propagandists at Fox (et al).
Do any of the people screaming at Obama here truly believe that their interests will be equally or better served by depressing the Dem base and helping the rethugs take control of Congress? Really? You all are proving that you don’t recognize the “true domestic enemies.”
But I actually do not wonder anymore.
I know why.
Why?
Because the entire media system is corporate-owned, and if a program or network sells effectively, it is protected.
Protected how?
Protected by a massive resistance to the promulgation of this one simple idea…boycott advertisers who sponsor programs that promote policies and ideas with which you strongly disagree.
Vote with your wallet.
Duh.
Why has this completely self-evident concept not yet come out of the closet and smacked the media upside the head? Why is there almost no mention of it whatsoever on the talking head circuit or in the so-called “news” media?
Because it is a two-edged…make that a three-edged…sword. Maybe even four or five edges, if it really began to do some serious cutting.
Y’see…if say the leftiness people actually got their shit together enough to effectively boycott major Fox advertisers, not only would that begin to put a dent in the profits of any number of corporations, it would give other special interest groups the wrong idea. The wrong right idea.
UH oh!!!
The rightiness people might begin to boycott MSNBC advertisers.
People of color might begin to boycott banks that discriminate on loan applications and the networks that are supported by them.
Anti-war and environmentalist people might begin to boycott Big Oil and its networks.
Anyone with any sense whatsoever might begin to boycott Big Pharma and Big Finance.
Uh oh squared!!! Cubed, even.
The boycott snowball would pick up size and speed as it rolled down the hill.
Economic collapse is already an ongoing fear now. Imagine how badly a movement of that sort might might affect the consumer-driven economy that is just about all the US has left.
So now Matt Taibbi pays a little attention to this idea.
And finally a few leftiness bloggers reluctantly shake their heads yes. Why are they doing this? Because someone who works for a leftish corporate-owned media outfit wrote something about it.
What do you think would happen to the execrable Rolling Stone corporate-owned music hype if this concept was to be combined with a CULTURESTRIKE!!! kind of movement? What if people started boycotting Rolling Stone advertisers because they support a magazine that has contributed more than any other media outlet except MTV to bringing down the level of popular American musical culture from an extraordinarily high place to its current Lady Gaga/Gangsta Rap/Canned Country position in the hypnomedia sewer?
Rolling Stone bettah be careful.
And y’know what?
I guarantee that they will be careful.
Betcha Taibbi has already heard the word from above on this one.
Sotto voce, of course.
Betcha.
Betcha.
So here it is again.
The only possible solution.
Sigh.
Too bad I’m not making a coupla hundred thousand per year writing for a big time so-called leftiness media outlet.
Maybe some’a you shmoon woulda heard the word already.
Wake the fuck up.
You’ve been had.
Step away from he TV with your brains in the air.
Station WTFU once again signing off.
Gotta go work on something real.
Later…
AG
Read my latest post if you have not done so already. It’s about the same subject as this thread, really.
Booman Sees The Woods. But He’s Not Seeing The Trees.
Here’s a sample.
Like dat.
Bet on it.
Learn how to fight this?
I can only hope.
And pray.
AG
Obama’s election, and the present Democratic majorities, represent a step in the wrong direction.
They overlook the vital importance to a political party of consistently losing general elections.
Look at the Republicans in Congress. They have party discipline, a unified vision, a narrow focus on readily identifiable values, and above all, coherent messaging. They have all that, though, only thanks to decades out of power, the mid 30’s to the mid ’90’s.
We must do likewise.
Reduction of the bag of cats that presently calls itself the “Democratic Party” down to a cold, hard, small, disciplined, real Democratic party is the only thing that will save the country.
We can’t achieve that till we’re freed the party, as a party, from distractions and encumbrances like winning elections, having a majority, passing legislation, or governing. That’s the path towards nothing but muddle, compromise, and failure.
Oh, sure, people will carp, and point out that during this process real people will suffer real pain that could otherwise be averted. But I am sure if it is explained to them properly they will understand the necessity of their sacrifice.
Some day, when real progressives can finally take power, we can recognize their sacrifice. A memorial, tasteful, and not too grandiose on the Mall. Or a commemorative stamp….
(Do I make DKos’ rec list?)
(shrug) As long as white folks are unwilling to call other white folks racist, these things will all continue.
Speaking of knowing thy enemy, you guys might want to check this out. The New Yorker did an investigative piece on Koch Industries. If you want to know more about the insanity against the Obama administration, this article sheds more light.