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sisabetMy earlier post about Politics, the South, and well - I forget what else - have drained me. I am now drained. I started the post at a feeling of wistful tiredness, moved into righteous anger, transitioned straight into frustration with a stop-over at Lake Dear God I Need Some Fanfic.
And while I can see other's views and I totally get the anger - I still do not think my home is a lost cause peopled by raving lunatics. I believe in a few solid things:
I believe that the Democratic Party's future will be decided soon and it will be decided by us.
I believe that the key to winning is not in diluting our values and compromising our beliefs in order to appeal to more radical and fringe groups. I think that we will benefit by allowing our competitor to go this route of divisiveness.
I believe that the only way we are going to get this message out and to even begin to set the conversation and the tone and to take back our words are if we begin to fight back. I don't think we have. I think there is a view out there that this - what is at stake - is so obvious that anyone should be able to see it. Well, if the playing field was a fair one, perhaps they would. It isn't and we need to acknowledge that and do something about it.
Tearing apart at ourselves is not the way to do something about it. This is what the Conservatives want us to do. We need to take stock, for certain, and realize that we did fail. It is not easy to admit but we did. Excuses and blame and calling it a "values game" and saying that Jesusland wants G. W. is self-defeating, untrue and what they want us to do.
If we concede that this race was lost on values - we give them the next election on a silver platter.
The race was lost because we did not fight back. We let them dictate the conversation and the tone. They challenge our patriotism and we let them. They challenge our decency and we let them. They are organized and work together to set this tone and they have an agenda that has nothing at all to do what the voting public is seeing.
It's not religion, stupid. It is repetition.
I'm not saying that religion does not play a role in how people vote. Of course it does. When a person has a particular faith - that is an important part of who they are and it does shape what they see and how they react. But saying that all people of faith are single issue voters is short-sided and not true.
Also saying this is the first election where a candidate has smiled and talked about being a man of God isn't quite true- well this has been going on for awhile. The fact that it is such an issue now is quite possibly a positive indicator that a Great Big Change is on the horizon.
Y'all remember Nixon?
But when we allow them to over-simplify the issues and make the choice either you vote for God or Not, we lose.
So we either pull our shit together and start putting up a fight cause look here - we need a presence. If the administration is gonna be sending 5 different reps onto the Sunday morning talk show circuit and they are all going to be saying the same thing and we cannot count on our media to challenge or question anything so nebulous as "facts" then we are going to have to respond. We need credibility and a voice and we are not going to get either by insulting half the country.
We are the party of Hope. We need to start acting like it. And grind our enemies under our stylish, yet sanctified by logic, heels. That is what is missing from our Hope. The grinding of the enemies.
We need our own Karl Rove. Only less evil.
And while I can see other's views and I totally get the anger - I still do not think my home is a lost cause peopled by raving lunatics. I believe in a few solid things:
I believe that the Democratic Party's future will be decided soon and it will be decided by us.
I believe that the key to winning is not in diluting our values and compromising our beliefs in order to appeal to more radical and fringe groups. I think that we will benefit by allowing our competitor to go this route of divisiveness.
I believe that the only way we are going to get this message out and to even begin to set the conversation and the tone and to take back our words are if we begin to fight back. I don't think we have. I think there is a view out there that this - what is at stake - is so obvious that anyone should be able to see it. Well, if the playing field was a fair one, perhaps they would. It isn't and we need to acknowledge that and do something about it.
Tearing apart at ourselves is not the way to do something about it. This is what the Conservatives want us to do. We need to take stock, for certain, and realize that we did fail. It is not easy to admit but we did. Excuses and blame and calling it a "values game" and saying that Jesusland wants G. W. is self-defeating, untrue and what they want us to do.
If we concede that this race was lost on values - we give them the next election on a silver platter.
The race was lost because we did not fight back. We let them dictate the conversation and the tone. They challenge our patriotism and we let them. They challenge our decency and we let them. They are organized and work together to set this tone and they have an agenda that has nothing at all to do what the voting public is seeing.
It's not religion, stupid. It is repetition.
I'm not saying that religion does not play a role in how people vote. Of course it does. When a person has a particular faith - that is an important part of who they are and it does shape what they see and how they react. But saying that all people of faith are single issue voters is short-sided and not true.
Also saying this is the first election where a candidate has smiled and talked about being a man of God isn't quite true- well this has been going on for awhile. The fact that it is such an issue now is quite possibly a positive indicator that a Great Big Change is on the horizon.
Y'all remember Nixon?
But when we allow them to over-simplify the issues and make the choice either you vote for God or Not, we lose.
So we either pull our shit together and start putting up a fight cause look here - we need a presence. If the administration is gonna be sending 5 different reps onto the Sunday morning talk show circuit and they are all going to be saying the same thing and we cannot count on our media to challenge or question anything so nebulous as "facts" then we are going to have to respond. We need credibility and a voice and we are not going to get either by insulting half the country.
We are the party of Hope. We need to start acting like it. And grind our enemies under our stylish, yet sanctified by logic, heels. That is what is missing from our Hope. The grinding of the enemies.
We need our own Karl Rove. Only less evil.
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no subject
Date: 2004-11-19 08:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-19 09:27 pm (UTC)we cannot count on our media to challenge or question anything so nebulous as "facts" then we are going to have to respond. We need credibility and a voice and we are not going to get either by insulting half the country.
::waves:: I've been dl-ing your vids and reading your journal for awhile now. Thought I'd stop lurking and say 'Hi'.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-19 09:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-20 02:27 am (UTC)You deserve this to be an icon. I *need* this to be an icon.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-20 05:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-20 02:33 pm (UTC)::fears::
Feel compelled to mention..
Date: 2004-11-20 10:24 pm (UTC)It's time for the Democrats to face reality: They are the party of urban America. If the cities elected our president, if urban voters determined the outcome, John F. Kerry would have won by a landslide. Urban voters are the Democratic base.
It's time to state something that we've felt for a long time but have been too polite to say out loud: Liberals, progressives, and Democrats do not live in a country that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico. We live on a chain of islands. We are citizens of the Urban Archipelago, the United Cities of America. We live on islands of sanity, liberalism, and compassion--New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, St. Louis, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and on and on. And we live on islands in red states too--a fact obscured by that state-by-state map. Denver and Boulder are our islands in Colorado; Austin is our island in Texas; Las Vegas is our island in Nevada; Miami and Fort Lauderdale are our islands in Florida. Citizens of the Urban Archipelago reject heartland "values" like xenophobia, sexism, racism, and homophobia, as well as the more intolerant strains of Christianity that have taken root in this country. And we are the real Americans. They--rural, red-state voters, the denizens of the exurbs--are not real Americans. They are rubes, fools, and hate-mongers. Red Virginia prohibits any contract between same-sex couples. Compassionate? Texas allows the death penalty to be applied to teenaged criminals and has historically executed the mentally retarded. (When the Supreme Court ruled executions of the mentally retarded unconstitutional in 2002, Texas officials, including Governor Rick Perry, responded by claiming that the state had no mentally retarded inmates on death row--a claim the state was able to make because it does not test inmates for mental retardation.)
Re: Feel compelled to mention..
Date: 2004-11-20 11:48 pm (UTC)itizens of the Urban Archipelago reject heartland "values" like xenophobia, sexism, racism, and homophobia, as well as the more intolerant strains of Christianity that have taken root in this country.
So fucking untrue I bite my thumb at them. Fuckers.
Eeek
Date: 2004-11-21 01:09 am (UTC)Re: Eeek
Date: 2004-11-21 01:24 am (UTC)I am just flabbergasted by the utter stupidity and if these are the kind of people running our party - no wonder rural voters are so disenchanted. Because apparently Urban Centers are LALA Lands where racism and homophobia and poverty are conquered. Where women are not victimized and children are not mistreated. Where everyone knows your name and greets you with a smile and "Hey fellow human - how goes your day?" and the ignorance beyond the gleaming city limits is to be ignored and discounted because they just do not truly matter.
Silly Mississippians - spending their Federal Transportation money on increasing/improving roads and access instead of increasing public transportation...silly silly silly.
Hate Crimes only happen in Texas, you know. Apparently Howard Beach never fucking happened.
Yeah - this country has serious problems with intolerance. Nice that the cities feel that they fucking have it conquered. I guess if you had any sense at all - you'd already be there.
I am just disgusted by this outlook and if it is adopted by my party - well - I don't think the Democratic Party will survive.
Re: Eeek
Date: 2004-11-21 06:21 am (UTC)Washington State is like a microcosm of the national debate. You've got liberal, urban Seattle and the further away from Seattle you get(with a few exceptions), the more rural and conservative it gets, with Eastern Washington being a mirror universe version of the west side of the mountains: conservative, rural, twice as large and half as populated. Maria Cantwell got elected to the Senate in 2000 by winning just 4 out of 39 counties.
So we get a lot of shit from just within our state and plenty of demonization of those evil Seattle liberals on just about every issue, especially when it comes to money. Even though our tax dollars are pretty much driving spending in this state, eastern washington feels compelled to balk at any badly needed transportation dollars being spent in Seattle. We ended up voting (four times!) to build a monorail built and funded in Seattle because the state and region has been unable and/or unwilling to do anything to solve the 2nd worst traffic in the nation.
Yeah - this country has serious problems with intolerance. Nice that the cities feel that they fucking have it conquered. I guess if you had any sense at all - you'd already be there.
I am just disgusted by this outlook and if it is adopted by my party - well - I don't think the Democratic Party will survive.
I think the point is Democrats need to stop compromising and apologizing for holding the correct positions on a variety of social and economic issues and start expanding their natural urban base which is atrophying from neglect. We don't have every problem solved, but by focusing on issues important to urban areas, we can solidify our support, expand them because cities will be more attractive places to live, and lead by example. There's nothing wrong with taking pride in where we live, especially when the "Real America" is constantly presented as some idylic, rural farmhouse in Kansas and the city is where the young and innocent go to become corrupted by liberal elites.
In any case, I suspect you and Dan Savage have helluva lot more common ground than differences. Maybe you can start with love for guy on guy action?
Re: Eeek
Date: 2004-11-21 03:25 pm (UTC)Remember back in the sixties (well - we were not yet born - but work with me here) when Liberal Brethern would come down South to lend a hand? Cause buddy - help would be nice. It would be a lot nicer than being told I am surrounded by unAmericans and there is no hope for them and by living here - I am a bigot, I am racist, I am sexist, I am a homophobe (of course all of these can be described with the word "bigot" but we need more empty rhetoric and we need someone charismatic saying it. Just a thought). I don't care if he turns around and says "Oh I was speaking generally" - that kind of hate speech is *exactly* what he deplores the Christian Right for - he cannot have it both ways.
I think you are right in that we cannot ignore the Urban Bases -- but I think that if we ignore the Republican Propaganda machine none of this will matter. Taking back rural/suburban/southern America (which we have carried in the past - so don't tell me it can't be done) is dependant on having a larger voice nationally.
And we don't. They do. We don't. People hear what the conservatives want them to hear, anyone who speaks out against it is systematically demonized and destroyed. I think we are shying away from fighting on those terms because it does seem a waste of time and shallow and just stupid. But then it appears we are not responding at all, and people believe the lies. And I don't want us to all turn into Laura Ingrams cause that would be scary and wrong and just plain icky. But we need to respond someway.
Oh and and we really need to hold tight to our underdog status. America loves an underdog. The GOP is picking on Rocky, Rudy and the Bad News Bears right now.