There are a lot of very difficult problems in the world right now. I think we’re going through perhaps the roughest patch we’ve seen since 1979. It’s hard to keep an upbeat attitude in the face of all this crap. But, for me, the most dispiriting thing is probably just the cynicism and despair I routinely encounter in the comments to everything I write and read.
We need to keep our chins up and keep pushing or things are going to take a real turn for the worse.
Have you seen Michelle Nunn’s latest gambit? Complaining that her opponent is not close enough to the Chamber of Commerce. Seriously. The did back Kingston over Perdue, not sure why.
Will Nunn be more responsive to our values than Perdue?
Will Nunn vote for a Democrat as Senate Majority Leader?
OK then.
A purer progressive/liberal with less name recognition than Nunn would lose in Georgia by 10 percent or more. Let’s pound the heck out of Nunn once elected so we can hold her vote as often as possible, but let’s get her elected first.
BTW, Dunn attacked Purdue in a debate sponsored by the CoC for walking out of an earlier meeting with the Chamber after only 10 minutes. That is a valid critique of Perdue’s temperament.
I ignore cynicism. It’s a cover for lack of true understanding and real experience more often than not.
Sometimes. Other times it’s a right understanding of the limitations of our activism – when we need 10 miles but our activism can only get us 10 yards then the result can be cynicism.
I’m 66 years old. I demonstrated when I went to Berkeley in the Sixties. I’ve been through a year in the Mekong Delta, gum surgery, and raising an autistic child. I’ve never voted for anyone who wasn’t a Democrat. To paraphrase a saying then-current during my tour in the Delta, “If you’re not cynical then you don’t understand the situation.”
Typical – like so many (though not all) of your generation, you think it’s wise to substitute cynicism for a realistic yet hopeful kind of advocacy. Progressive achievements don’t emerge from cynicism and they never have. Indeed, the cynicism of your generation is a direct cause of the success of the conservative movement over the past 40 years. That’s nothing to be proud of.
My modest experience of life suggests that anyone who begins a comment with the word “Typical” and then goes on to paint a broad brush indictment of an entire generation is full of shit.
Need I remind you that the Young Americans for Freedom that created the modern conservative movement are also of the generation you despise. As are most of the Tea Party faithful. Almost all of the Blue Dog Democrats, the Clintons, and most of the CEOs of the 1990s and 2000s. And Rush Limbaugh and most of the first generation of conservative shock jocks. And lots of others who though Ronald Reagan’s nominating speech for Barry Goldwater was a rousing call of hope to shaking off creeping socialism in our nation.
The success of the conservative movement was a result of the collapse of the Democratic Party after 1968. That collapse was triggered by two huge policy events. (1) The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the failure of state Democratic Parties to open up to black participation at all levels of government–that didn’t start happening until the 1980s after Reagan had won. (2) The failure of the Democratic Party to authentically change course in Vietnam after Johnson decided not to run as a failed war president; most specifically the brutality heaped on demonstrators against the war at the Democratic National Convention and the determination to separate the working class from those seeking peace as a political strategy to keep the war going. Both of those events were actions of the Democratic national and state establishments.
And the national and Democratic state establishments have overseen the loss of popular power and momentum that the Obama campaign generated in 2008.
Progressive achievements have emerged from struggle in the streets and public mobilization of people in ways that neither party could control. A realistic appraisal says that without industrial strikes in the 1930s, there would have been no Fair Labor Standards Act from FDR. Without World War II and its labor shortage from the draft there would not have been the labor agreements that made the US prosperous in the 1950s or the labor union membership that sought to preserve them. Realism would have confined folks to waiting for whatever Congress decided to do for a New Deal.
Cynicism is Max Baucus and Evan Bayh selling out the chance for health care reform in order to preserve their revolving door options. Cynicism is Chris Dodd working to curtail the free flow of information and innovation. Cynicism is the current jobs of several of the Obama staffers, including David Plouffe.
Seems to me that cynicism crosses generational boundaries. And “realism” often means comfortable accommodation with the status quo–which makes the term “progressive” hollow by definition.
The success of the conservative movement can be laid to the failures of LBJ, Richard Daley, Scoop Jackson, and even Tip O’Neill (imagine him treating Reagan like McConnell has treated Obama).
Me. I’ve voted yellow dog Democrat since 1972. And I’ve seen one hell of a lot of yellow dogs. But the Republicans were lots worse. It wasn’t the Boomers who let the conservative movement win. It was the generation that came of age in 1980 and were were absolutely taken by Ronald Reagan and had just read their Ayn Rand and… (Boomers rarely knew who Ayn Rand was; our guilty pleasure was reading Marx, Che, and Tolkien).
Thanks for telling it like it is, THD. One sees so much utter bullshit these days about “The Baby Boomers”, as if everyone in a given generation has the same personality and the same attitudes.
How could I not agree.
I have been a yellow dog dem longer than you, I am proud to say but I am from the north. Does that disqualify me?
Boomer hatred basically demonstrates that a person is clueless, stereotypic, and dumb. Really.
No wonder I agree with you so much. In 12 days I’ll be 69. Staring 70 in the face. Soon I’ll be screaming at the kids to get off my lawn.
95% of developments make it more likely that only the super rich are going to carry on our civilization so I’m not sure what progress is even possible.
Bad, perhaps, but it’s never as bad as it looks.
The notion that the present situation is somehow uniquely terrible is always an invitation to do something rash, and regrettable, that would otherwise never get done.
I liked your second paragraph so much, I quoted it in a FB post.
Keep pushing what?
I keep reminding people that if they want to change Congress, it’s turning out 175,000 per district and the key to it is getting the people who already agree with you to actually vote instead of trying to convert people at the last minute. Succeed at that and opinion polls don’t matter.
There is similar math for US Senate, governor, legislatures,…down to city councils and soil and water commissions. All offices are important in some context.
And electoral strategies at the grassroots are the least cost actions that one could take.
I think you need to take a break from checking out NRO every day. It’s good to know what the shit-spewers are spewing, but not at the expense to your sanity.
We are talking about this “cynicism”, aren’t we?
that whole “survive in the wild” is also a load of crap. ppl survived in the wild without overriding concept of the group? social values? cooperation? ur John Galt brought down the wooly mamoth himself?
I am a newly-retired high-school environmental science teacher. Looking at climate change, endangered species, population growth, and other env.-related issues has certainly caused me to think that the whole planet is going down the porcelain throne in a hurry.
However–I remember the enthusiasm of my students when they learned a new concept or came to understand the seriousness of our environmental problems. I am going to be working part-time at an environmental center in the fall, running workshops for elementary school kids. I plan to do volunteer work for various environmental organizations, and I will definitely get out and vote in Nov.
So I may despair, but I keep going on anyway. So (to keep the toilet metaphor going), even though the walls and floors are covered thickly in feces, if all you have is a toothbrush to clean it with, then that’s what you do…
The one thing you can be sure if is that if you don’t try, you will definitely fail.
They give you toothbrushes when you retire from teaching high school? Who knew? 😉
Love the urban, suburban, and urban creeks and rivers. ‘Tis where free range kids can find frogs, salamanders, trash, old tires, and an occasional washing machine to pull out and sell for scrap metal.
Keep up the good work.
Well, there’s no ongoing war on the scale of the Iran-Iraq war, the Rwandan genocide or the ensuing Congo wars, so there’s that. And the specter of total nuclear holocaust is smaller than it used to be.