Reply #113: Here's an old joke:

[Mythsaje]

This kid was born to this average couple and, as he grew, he never said a word. They sent him to all the doctors they could think of, and those doctors found nothing wrong with him. One day, just before he would have started school, he came downstairs and sat down at the breakfast table, took a bite of his oatmeal and said, plain as day, "Hey, this is cold."

His parents were overjoyed. After a round of hugging and crying, they asked him "why haven't you said anything before now?"

"Up until now," he said, "everything was fine."

Honestly, I'd love to be cheering some serious work on the progressive front by Congress or Obama. It's hard to get overly enthusiastic about stem cells, as wonderful as they might be. At least his SCOTUS nomination isn't batshit crazy. At least it's not McCain (ReBush) in the White House. At least Obama can speak English rather than Gibberish.

We're certainly better off in a lot of ways. But without a serious attempt to reverse the worst trends of the past several years (if not decades) we're not going to gain any ground against the machine. We're merely a placeholder before the next Republican administration can slip into power, having gained an incredible amount of information about how to go about ruining the country permanently.

This isn't exaggeration and this isn't hyperbole. It's history. We've seen it again and again. At this point all we're really seeing is a little breathing space.

I was like the little kid in the joke. I sat back and observed and waited for something to happen. Only, nothing really did. And doesn't look like it's going to. Instead we're going to creep forward, making so few advances that the next massive push from the right is going to push us right over the edge into oblivion. We gain nothing from the victory if we don't actually DO anything to solve the problems. Buffing around the edges so they're all shiny isn't going to cut it.

And even of more concern is doing things like pushing for an internet security measure that could, in the hands of the far right, screw us worse than we've ever been screwed before. So could mandatory insurance, for that matter. We can't just institute this shit thinking "hey, we won't misuse it." WE might not, but THEY sure as hell will.