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23 March 2010: I Am a Progressive
Even as I supported Obama's health-care legislation from the beginning--from the days when the public option (pace Mr. Lakoff, who thought it would have fared better among the public if called the American Plan) and single-payer structuring were prominent features--to the day when the Senate's whittled-down version had alienatedmost of us, and continues to.
But I breathed a vast sigh of relief when Dennis Kucinich finally decided to vote yay last week, saying that something is better than nothing.
May I offer that same argument to defend President Obama, a statesman drowning in a cesspool, who this week was thrown a rope and hasn't even grabbed onto it yet?
Believe me, we will ALL miss him if we join and abet his antagonists now that the legislation will pass. We will really have something to gripe about if Palin or McCain win the reins in 2012, or even McDonnell., Virginia's slick new Republican governor, Mr. America.
Though Democratic nays numbered into the thirties, I was gratified that there were no abstentions, which would have functioned identically.
I'm right in DC, though were I to frequent Capitol Hill directly more often I'd probably be scared away to Idaho. Do you have ANY IDEA what that guy is up against? I cannot only feel the hostility emanating from the opposition, but wonder if nearly half of a governmental body that calls itself Democratic has ever stooped so low as to promise to actively thwart efforts toward implementation of a plan that will save lives in the millions.
In the face of such intense opposition from both sides, it is a miracle that legislation passed did not instead condone flying over crack-infested inner-city zones and spraying them with DDT or outright bombing them.
Such an option might have drawn vigorous and enthusiastic Republican support, solid to the core despite some flaccid initial misgivings voiced by Olympia Snowe. They might have hired Professor Lakoff to frame the legislation in an acceptable way. One member of the former "axis of evil" triplets was, after all, the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea.
The hypocrisy, corruption, and laser-sharp iniquities emanating from the hub of the world are unspeakable and unacceptable. The demolition of ACORN is risible compared to the prosperity of the NRA and other powerful right-wing lobbies that have brought down more than one political career among their own copartisans.
My values are Progressive, my reactions pragmatic. Untold levels of corruption will inevitably infiltrate the new bureaucracy on the horizon, this New Colossus that may end up as hypocritical as the beautiful words adorning Lady Liberty's herm (I know that my license to refer to that abomination is fraying at the edges).
But somehow, despite such inevitabilities, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security have helped tens of millions, and the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts, all but one of the preceding products of the sensational sixties, have contributed positively to our culture. None has cured essential foundational cracks as exemplified best at the written level by "The New Colossus" and in actuality, by the persistence of rank poverty and inner-city hells like those best portrayed by the movie Precious.
I repeat, Obama is a statesman, the likes of whom won't be excelled at his level for a very long time. Kucinich won't win, nor Al Sharpton, nor Cynthia McKinney nor Cindy Sheehan.
I've also already stressed my hair-raising realization that those very people stabbing at the foundations of the Enlightenment that created our revolution attend church every Sunday to worship a Jewish socialist hippy, outspokenly opposed to the strong establishment, willing to die for his ideals. Some of his best friends, few in number, were Jewish--all of them, in fact.
So what? These churchgoers all profess to follow in his path and emulate his life. The only manifestation of that evident is the moment when Jesus opted out for a massage with the dismissive "The poor you will have with you forever."
But that was just a take-five, not a condemnation of the disgracefully large segment of humanity we name the have-nots.
Will dissent destroy democracy in our age, rather than nourish it?
*****
I am bent over, shivering, in anticipation of a tidal wave of abuse and a formal stripping off of my veteran status as an activist and idealist. I have a hard time realizing again and again that after so long I find myself defending the "establishment" against my own colleagues. Might I be accused of being at the farthest right on the far left? I am not alone.
Again and again, even as he reaches out for bipartisanship, Obama has stood up against his antagonists: protesting against the "pre-existing condition" clause used by insurance underwriters indifferent to the untold number of deaths and permanent disabilities being condoned; protesting against this rape of democracy by the right-wing, who promise not only to persist in their opposition, but to do everything they can to thwart activation of any part of the new legislation.
Obama has publicly reminded McCain why he was elected by a landslide as his arch antagonist gloats; he has inveighed against the rank corruption among right-wing lobbyists and championed legislation to clean up their practices.
Every day I hear, in passing, about legislation even Progressives would support, quietly passed into law, some of it even supported by a few Republicans.
*****
Wake up, guys. It's now or never. The government can offer us no one more Progressive to lead the world, but certainly a troop of clowns wait in the wings to mock, rather than dilute our aspirations.
Don't ever stop fighting for Progressive ideals. I'm with you there. But there's also the old adage that "You never know what you've got til it's gone."
Make sure that our efforts work toward positives and don't broaden Neocon cat grins too widely.
Olympia stuck with her side. I'm sticking with the Dems, as does Dennis Kucinich. Let us run slowly or we'll fall into a cesspool and sink, not having learned from Obama how to stay afloat and survive.
