Article: Betrayal (Or How The 2007 Democrats Are Losing Democracy)

Dear Democratic Leadership:

By giving us false hope to extract gut-wrenching work for your political power, you are complicit in the demise of government by the people and the final rise, by default, of plutocratic theocracy. Short of grief for a loved one, no pain is greater than the pain of betrayal; no betrayer more wicked and withering than one who seduces the already betrayed to dream of a new fidelity then slips away after obtaining the prize. Betray me twice, lose me forever.

This is what you have done to us since that beautiful November day when we finally succumbed to your promises. We worked harder than you can imagine: going from door to door in the rain, making phone calls to strangers after working all day, giving up our weekends to raise money and convince the doubtful. We came out despite our loss of hope; we cajoled others to stir from their cynical paralysis and give it one more shot.

You gave us hope. You reignited our belief that the people actually matter. We brought older, deflated Americans back into political action and watched their spirits rise as they remembered the wonder of working for real change. We convinced young people who felt abandoned by politicians to get involved, and they loved it. They believed for the first time that politics mattered; that THEY mattered to their government.

"It will be different this time. This time it will matter. They are promising more, saying new things, showing courage. Just give them one more chance," we said to our friends, or families, our youth. You are such practiced enchanters you even had us fixing your lairs for you.

We screamed ourselves hoarse in joy when we delivered for you; got you back. Days and weeks of post-election exhaustion, the colds and flu we caught from ignoring our own needs were all worth it. We had won; we had worked so hard and obtained our goal and now we really did believe again. This process actually works if we work hard enough. You thanked us and praised us and promised to raise our message high in the most exalted offices of the land.

Then you went right back to your old ways. Talking sweetly to us while pleasing your old suitors. Yes, you passed a few good measures in one House, but you stand accomplice to their weakening and undoing in the other.

And you have abandoned altogether any meaningful efforts toward the mission with which we charged you: end this horrible, wasteful, criminal war and return our once great nation to the pursuit of justice and liberty. The "People's House" has yet to even take it up. The Senate, with a Democratic majority, cannot manage to get it discussed, to even force an actual filibuster, crumbling instead (or failing to show up and vote) before a mere threat of one.

You have broken our hearts, sapped our will, left our once lifted spirits wobbling listlessly in hopeless surrender. Death of this democratic dream is better now than fighting on knowing those who whispered promises of passion and communion have donned again the paymasters' hood and armor to do his bidding in disregard of ours.

We read that you fear being called weak and cowardly if you work courageously to stop this insanity; that you must continue to support the war effort or risk losing future elections as national security pansies. Could you possibly be more dismissive of us? WE, WE, WE, the PEOPLE, elected you to end the war. Who are these phantoms who would defeat you if you actually do so?

This is where you add insult to injury. Do you think us fools? H.L. Mencken may have said "nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people," but I feel certain no one ever gained long-term trust and confidence insulting the intelligence of the American people. We know it is not our continued votes you fear losing. We know you fear losing billions of dollars of corporate cash, not just in campaign donations, but also in cozy consulting jobs, mainstream media positions, and revolving-door appointments on the way into and out of public office.

Don't you see what you are doing? You are bringing true that terrible, cynical nightmare that we really don't matter after all, even to you; that working and voting and believing are, in fact, for naught.

No matter what you think or what your sycophantic handlers, narcissistic strategists, and slick money-changers tell you, WE got you elected. You did not get you elected; corporations did not get you elected; targeted centralized spending did not get you elected. You were elected because millions of ordinary people got engaged in hopes of changing the way our government works. In hopes of saving government by the people.

If you do not heed their desires and demands very quickly, you will lose them. And you will not get them back again. If so much hard work can be fanned away like mere bog mist, then why work, why vote if it does no good?

And if you lose these millions, you are left only with those whom money can buy and intolerant religion can move. You are left with a mutant beast-child of plutocracy and theocracy, knowing it was borne of your own infidelity.