Tiny politics
But challenging as they are, it's not the magnitude of our problems that concerns me the most. It's the smallness of our politics.
-- Barack Obama, 2007, announcing his plans to run for President.
Revelers revealing how small they are.
--TPM commenter BlindBat, today, "Conservatives Revel in America's Olympic Defeat".
Here's the thing about the Republicans.
The thing that interests me about the conservative movement today, really, is that it isn't even anymore that their positions are wrong-- it's just how tiny, irrelevant and alienated from the lives of normal Americans their concerns are. It's at the point that even if every thing they said was correct it still wouldn't any of it be important.
America faces the biggest recession in most of a century, two wars mired in uncertainty, and too many fundamental infrastructure, environmental and social problems to easily list. The GOP thinks that the most important thing to focus on at that moment is an obscure social justice group called ACORN.
America tries to grapple with health care reform proposals that could in the long term fundamentally alter how we approach medicine itself, how Americans allocate 10% of their income, what it means to run a small business. All the GOP can find it in them to care about, when they can be bothered to form a coherent position at all, is how it affects abortions and illegal immigrants.
Obama's presidency goes through a month of complex, dizzying highs and lows, where his signature public policy issue is taken to what is perceived as the brink of failure; the game on Iran and nuclear nonproliferation changes fundamentally, more than once; and one of Obama's closest public political allies dies, briefly throwing into doubt the very ability of Democrats to control the Senate. Then Obama is unsuccessful in a bid to host the Olympics seven years from now, and Rush Limbaugh calls that the "worst day" of his presidency.
And it just goes on and on like this. I remember just a few years ago, back when the Left embraced positions far outside what was at the time the mainstream and sent ourselves into the political wilderness, it was over big things, important things--unjust war and hundreds of thousands of deaths, government surveillance, torture. Things worth making yourself a pariah over. On the other hand look at these things the Republican Party considers important enough to alienate itself from the mainstream over. It's nothing. Their politics are based in nothing. They're destroying themselves over nothing.
Well I hope you are correct here. I mean I hope they are destroying themselves.
October 2, 2009 7:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Well I hope you are correct here. I mean I hope they are destroying themselves."
Oh yeah...GOP Brand In Terrible Shape, Polls Show
October 2, 2009 7:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Where do I sign on to help?
October 2, 2009 7:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
SarahPAC is ready to take your donations today!
I'm kidding. I... I think I'm kidding.
October 2, 2009 7:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's all well and good but when do we get a Left?
October 2, 2009 7:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, apparently it turns out that just because terrible things are happening to the GOP doesn't mean that good things happen to anyone else. Who knew? :(
October 2, 2009 11:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sadly, too many are looking to blame anything and anyone else, not realizing they are part of the problem instead of the solution. We all need to change negative reaction into positive action. If we want change for the better, it's up to us, not 'them'!
Truth: We have the government we deserve and lest we forget, the government is representative of We, The People!
Terrific post! Appreciate.
Rec'd.
October 2, 2009 8:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes! That We the People is inclusive of both the left and the right - you can't have one without the other. Too bad the right is busy building walls to protect themselves and their interests from others they can't come to grips with...just like Stalin did in Europe after WWII. Dividing the population between US and THEM is the first step on the road to Anarchy - a place a democracy doesn't want to go.
October 3, 2009 3:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
The GOP has been scorned. Do not assume that they will act unlike "a woman scorned!"
“Latent in every man is a venom of amazing bitterness, a black resentment; something that curses and loathes life, a feeling of being trapped, of having trusted and been fooled, of being the helpless prey of impotent rage, blind surrender, the victim of a savage, ruthless power that gives and takes away, enlists a man, and crowning injury inflicts upon him the humiliation of feeling sorry for himself.”
Paul Valery
October 2, 2009 8:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for this, chuck. As I read the Valery quote, I thought about how intensely I felt all this as an adolescent.
Most of us grow past the raw emotions and insecurities we experience as daily dramas played out in our teen years. I guess the GOP and their entourage just never grew up!
October 2, 2009 10:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jeesuz:
I grew up as the handsome jock...too smart to get smart. Even during those years, I experienced disillusionment with friends and those that called me a friend. To say that I wasn't affected by my disappointments would be a fallacy. Consciously or unconsciously, the "finds of life" molded me. You state that you outgrew your finds and went on with your life. Good for you. My heart-breaks and joys melded into what and who I am. I spent most of my life in leadership positions. Today, I have a wife and kids scattered all over the country. One son-in-law, a major in the Air Force. A son, a Lt. Commander in the Navy. In site of many reasons to become a social butterfly, I have chosen to avoid socializing...Totally. I fully understand Vallerys' quote and know that the properties he defines are instilled in me. Yet, I have, over many years, learned to subdue those natural impulses. I find it difficult to understand how you have "outgrown" those propensities!
Chuck
October 3, 2009 12:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
I perhaps was unclear what I meant, or didn't expand upon it as I should have.
I think we all have these raw emotions that seemingly pull at us most strongly in our adolescence. We do not ever outgrow them, but I think we find ways to channel them or otherwise make them less debilitating than they might be otherwise.
One of the strongest tools in dealing with feelings of being a victim of injustice and of confronting a life with bitterness and scorn is to learn empathy. There is something liberating in realizing we are not in this life alone; that we are not the only ones to feel the anger and the desperation that Valery addresses. Once we accept this as part of the human condition, we find purpose in the pursuit of peace and justice. Not just for ourselves, but for all others who suffer as well.
Such empathy offers us perspective. After all, it doesn't take much investigation to discover others who have a worse life situation than ours.
More importantly, however, it offers opportunity to experience victories in the fight to gain peace and justice for all. For example, I am not black or otherwise affected as a minority in this society. Yet I worked very hard in the Civil Rights movement and took the passage of the Civil Rights Act as a personal victory against Velery's "demons," if you will.
Finally, I cannot "own" the righteous rage within without acknowledging that all others are entitled to rage against injustice as well. In many ways, I suspect that this was the target when Lincoln called upon "the better Angels of our nature." It's not about an inherent "milk of human kindness," but instead a shared sense of justice and our own personal struggle with insecurities and injustice.
What I find most sad about the teabaggers and the GOP in general is that they seem to exhibit all the rage that can be mustered, and it seems to spring from a deep place within each person. But they have no empathy. Everything in the world becomes channelled through the prism of their own experience, and so they cannot see the wider view. They know they are angry and fearful and resentful, but they don't know the source for any of it. And so they lash out at the first available target, which is quite simply "the other."
The leadership in the GOP and their media cohorts like Beck and Limbaugh and Dobbs are excellent at manipulating this anger into a mob frenzy. It provides no solutions to our many problems, but it can be developed into a political movement. When done so, it usually leads to fascism. This should alarm us all, but in the meantime it offers good Nielsen Ratings and political cover for angry white men who will build a political career on such juvenile nonsense.
October 3, 2009 2:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Even worse then destroying themselves over nothing, they are taking the nation with them. We have an MSM determined to make the GOP the story of the day, day in and day out. The politico Dems are fearful of them, so rather then take advantage of their Dem majority, they quiver and seize up. Now is the time for them to rise up and deliver. If they did, the GOP would be lost for decades to come. The people are in favor of helathcare reform by a large margin, but one would never know it by the way the MSM plays the GOP music and the Dems dance to it.
October 3, 2009 1:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
The GOP may be distracted by overblown minutae, but our media has conditioned us to accept this as reality. Little stories, meaningless in themselves, are beaded together to form a psychic rosary. Missing blonde girls signify the danger of human predators in a society that has lost its values. Every political sideshow is inflated with moral helium... Hundreds of paid operatives discuss these inherently low-value events until they become the stuff of legend. Enemy and friendly nations are selectively portrayed to enhance their image.
It's all fairy tales. While the mechanisms of power operate on the energy of our contributions, we are treated with a Punch and Judy distortion of truth.
I mean, look at what has happened to TPM. The main pages have gone tabloid! What happened to news and investigation? They've gone down the memory hole in exchange for ad revenue.
October 3, 2009 11:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
They are not in any mood to be constructive. The decision that they have made is to do whatever is necessary to damage Obama and consequently Dems in hopes of returning to power in the next two election cycles. If that means contriving controversy by exaggerating what normally would/should be inconsequential, then so be it. It seems to get them face time via facile video panels on MSM programs. One can only hope that independent voters will be disgusted by the GOP's behavior and continue to move away from the right.
They have committed to a strategy of blind opposition, demonization, and of course, a heavy dose of fear-mongering. And that they will be able to win seats in 2010 by making Obama look as bad as possible.
Dare I say that in years to come this period in GOP history will be considered as a particularly despicable example of what presumably is public service.
October 3, 2009 2:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
MCC
Do you think it might be posable all the GOP base ruckus is a ruse to prevent anyone from discussing the past eight years of republican rule?
I can not help thinking that there must be a plan in place. I mean how is it posable a huge political organizations rudder can become so completely unhinged. I cant believe those people are hung up on the Olympic games, ACORN, Rush, Beck, or any of their other obsessions.
M. Paul
October 3, 2009 6:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
So, aside from the fact I seriously doubt ANYTHING the GOP is doing right now can be described by the word "plan"...
Do you think it might be posable all the GOP base ruckus is a ruse to prevent anyone from discussing the past eight years of republican rule?
It's honestly a possibility that's crossed my mind. One thing I've noticed is that a lot of the strangest things the Republicans are accusing Obama of are bizarro-world versions of things George W. Bush in some sense actually did. For a coarse example George W. Bush rounds up a number of people and without trial imprisons them in a camp, Obama becomes President, Michelle Bachmann accuses Obama of (under the auspices of the Census Bureau, of course) plotting to round up people without trial and put them in camps...
October 5, 2009 2:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, and then they accuse Obama of being a Socialist and they paint a Hitler mustache on him, while in the meantime all of our phone calls might be tapped at any given moment, for any given reason.
And, please, don't get me started on the corporate rape due to deregulation that dates back to Reagan.
Just.....don't.
October 5, 2009 3:14 AM | Reply | Permalink