Nancy Change a l Her Mind About Something, At Least

~ but not about anything that would have any immediate effect ~


Okay, it blows your Demon's mind, the extent to which Democrats are NOT doing a very good job of wresting the country's direction back from the belligerent, bellicose neocons who have done such a thorough job of undermining and eviscerating American democracy such that all but the hard-core dead-enders can see it clearly now.

What's to argue about, Demon wants to know? There couldn't be a clearer popular mandate to head away from the bankrupt policies by which the neocons have led (more like forced) us into our own destruction, nor a more important election, nor an opposition candidate who stands more clearly for McSame.

And still the Dems can't seem to get their shit together. On any position or policy matter you can name, instead of finding a way to articulate a position and STAND by it for more than a few brief seconds of a news soundbyte, they behave as if they're scared of their own shadows--and perhaps that's more truth than metaphor, because, at root, what's wrong with the Republican party is what's wrong with the Democratic party, only less so in this particular iteration circa 2008. That's why we're so hopelessly stuck in this either/or cycle, and WILL be until somebody comes along who has the courage to dream up something new and the facility to articulate it (hopefully with the nuanced complexity it deserves).

I had hoped, now that the Republicons have been in power so long they've been thorougly and completely corrupted by it, to the point that it's almost comical ~you can be certain at this point that anything issuing from a GOP mouth is spin, propaganda, a gross oversimplification, and, most commonly, all of the above. And still the Dems regularly fall into the trap Republicons set: the extremely dumbed-down policy debates that can be encapsulated in moronic, but pithy, electioneering slogans of which Karl Rove is master.

So it is with the absurd "drill here, drill now" mantra issuing recently from McSame in Sturgis, South Dakota, and the empty play-acting of those GOP Congresscritters who would have us believe that by merely talking about it, they made gas prices fall!

Of a piece with "the recession is all in your heads" and never mind the reality on ground~ which is, all but the most menial jobs have been outsourced abroad, you may not be able to stay in your home, you may have to sell your big-ass SUV, because otherwise you may not be able to afford groceries and your healthcare premiums. And oh, by the way. while you weren't looking, we did away completely with the social safety net, which you won't realize until you fall rudely to the ground, breaking all your metaphorical bones.

Oh well!

Your Demon is more than usually irate and excercised today because both Barack Obama and now, Nancy Pelosi, are being drawn into the same old traps, letting Republicans set the terms of the debate and being drawn into meaningless quibbles about effects while completely ignoring causes.

Nancy changes her mind re offshore drilling, from a U.K. paper,which seeks to explain why to a European audience why short-sighted Americans care more about gas prices than anything else, and how the illusory chimera of hope way, WAY down the road can possibly throw the most important American election in a century to a candidate who promises only to stay a disastrous worldwide course. They get it half-right:

"But energy policy has rapidly become the hot topic of the election, overtaking even Iraq or Georgia. In a country whose cultural and economic life is dominated by the car, there are no more passionate debates than over the doubling of petrol prices in the past couple of years."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/17/johnmccain.barackobama?gusrc=rss&feed=worldnews

The other half of the story, the part that really matters to those of us who have to live here and watch wearily as our Dems snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory yet again, is that, for some reason that escapes me entirely, the Dems aren't apparently able to take hold of the gift that so many years of GOP dominance and arrogance have delivered right to their doorsteps--and that is pervasive corruption on a scale that truly boggles the mind and should, in any sane and healthy democracy, be on the front pages every damned day.

That the multiple and still unresolved scandals generated by the Bush Administration over the past 8 years are left to fester, grow and infect the democratic process is a travesty that can be laid directly at the spineless Democrats' feet, including and especially Pelosi and Obama. Corruption and no-nonsense proactive proposals to clean it up should be the Democrats' rallying cry from here.

"Centrism" is not a political position so much as it is a survival strategy, a way of treading water while unbelievably vicious and nasty rightwingers have made of EVERYTHING a partisan issue. WAKE UP! The worst of them are gone now, marginalized, their theories and dire predictions completely discredited, having left everything in utter disarray. There could not be a better time to begin to turn things around, while the memories are fresh and the detritus lies in heaps around our feet.

Instead we get Dems who've internalized the empty rhetoric of their abusers and can't seem to find the courage to do anything more than tinker at the edges of disastrous neocon policy and practice in every last area that matters.


Update: Truthout, the indie news organization that's doing such a wonderful job of picking up news & keeping it alive for those of us not easily distracted by garbage and fluff ( a la Fox), reports today that the upcoming Democratic Convention will move more boldly to the left--even into dreaded progressive positions (*gasp*) that have been treated as political poison for the past several decades. Is there hope after all?
http://www.truthout.org/article/liberal-positions-gaining-popularity