Reply #103: how it ties in

[Two Americas]

Here is how this ties in with madfloridian's post.

Imagine...

Imagine if we stood with the immigrants (and people of color who are citizens, since the government makes little or no distinction on this) and fought back along side them.

If we stood with the immigrants, the right wingers would be finished, would have no response and would be revealed as racists and authoritarians and would lose the support of most Americans.

More importantly than that, we would suddenly see that the Democratic politicians had "grown a spine" as the activists like to say. They are already far to the left of us on this, and the general public is to the left of the politicians. But with virtually NO activist support, virtually NO white liberals standing with people of color, the politicians - politicians in a representative democracy, not lords and princes making decrees - are severely handicapped.

We do not have their backs, we are pushing them to the right. We see that right here everyday. A handful of people in the liberal and party activist community WANT the party to move to the right, to be the party of upscale enlightened intellectuals, and the rest of us are allowing them to drive us all to the right, and thereby strand the politicians and force them to move to the right as well.

The politicians can not get to far ahead of the public, and the public cannot get ahead of the activists and intellectuals. We move to the left - and almost ALL of us most definitely would if we were not continually terrorized with fear campaigns and witch hunts, by a handful among us, to move to the right or at least shut up about leftist ideas - and the public moves to the left and the politicians move to the left. That is how politics works. That is wat the right wingers are successfully doing.

Instead, we are cowards and we blame others. We say the politicians "have no spine" and that the people are "stupid idiots." We never look in the mirror. We sigh and say "oh well the public is pretty conservative, probably all a bunch of stupid racist assholes, and the politicians won't take us by our little hands and lead us to progressive wonderland, so what can we dooooooooo?"

What the government is doing to people of color here is entirely consistent with what the government is doing to the people of Iraq. It is the same battle. It is not a battle against "the war" - there is no real war, just an ongoing relentless war by the wealthy and powerful few against the working people here and abroad.

The reality of "the war" in Iraq, the every day reality for people, is a police state of repression and abuse. That is happening here every bit as much as it is happening there, maybe more so.

We are at fault for this unfolding nightmare of barbarism and inhumanity. If we refuse to stand behind the politicians when they stand against the police state, fail to have their back when they take stands or try to move to the left, we are binding their hands and turning the country over to the tyrants.

The battle is won or lost in the discussion, in the information flow, and we are blocking that information flow. We are moving the country to the right and toward authoritarianism with our caution and moderation, and by doing the dirty work of the right wingers by suppressing the critics and dissidents among us and taking the legs out from under any serious movement to stop this nightmare.

The Democratic party politicians are not missing a spine, they are missing legs, because we are cutting their legs out from under them by silencing and suppressing all left wing voices and critics and dissidents within the party.