Reply #51: Illegitimis non carborundum

[Lexingtonian]

-don't let the bastards grind you down. British WW2 educated war worker saying about their superiors.

It's easy to feel powerless and insignificant in the big picture. But we're individually all powerless and insignificant in the big picture, in a way, all the time. The same is true of Senators and even the President.

What's wrong about it is relativism, is submission to process and proceduralism and false equivalence, a lack of moral courage to in your own mind to insistently believe that a person who is the right deserves to win the verdict and majority support. Human beings are not equals in moral stature and dignity and merit.

In the big picture, we're through a four year period during which the American Right in its vanity imagined they could use their power to remake the world in their own image (whatever it is, not that they really checked it either). What it all really has been is a revisiting and rearguing and a partially resettling of Cold War wounds and traumas and ideas- a horrible, rage-filled and vile, therapy session. It was necessary in its own right, it brought all the collective dirt out from the depths and exposed it to the light, but it was simply awful. The collective psychological pressure to undergo it was so great in 2000 that the The People gave way to it, and since then has had to let it run its course.

It's a grief process for a dying pre-Modern world acted out in an ugly way- nasty Denial (2000/2001) in triumphalist form that this world was passing, then vicious Bargaining (2001-03) when 9/11 hit 'changing everything' and extreme measures could be taken to fight the many things feared and hated, and then Bitterness (2003/2004) as all the efforts to 'transform' the country and the world back to some ideal state started to end in failure.

We're now (2005/06) in the American Right's Depression phase, where the failure to change the fate of things- failure to turn back the clock- is conceded in actions but not admitted in words. All the Roe overturn/Christian Nation caste social order and New (colonial) World Order/Middle East puppet democracy domino effects and neo-feudal economics and Islamist extirpation fantasies are given up, proven impossible. They've lowered the bar to absolute control of themselves and adamantly persisting in the beliefs they hold about themselves and powers they have their hands on, to which they reject any outside authority or rule-based reduction or objective assessment. Right now they're more or less selling their usefulness on a few minor measures (illegal Latino workers, tax adjustments), they're emphasizing their last post-1968 conventionally believed credential- 'national security'. But by making it their strongpoint, they're at the same time putting it at risk and exposing it to attack.

In my opinion, yes, there is in one sense 'nothing we can do'. The failure of the Right's big projects and completion of their little ones are the political facts on which the present American politics of power turns. Democratic leaders largely have to wait these out and take possession of each such redoubt as Republicans fall back and weaken in sectors, incrementally tighten the siege and gun down counterattacks and burn out the support structure in the rear until the whole defense can be collapsed in one massed forward charge. Rather like the Union generals did to Lee's army at Petersburg in 1865. If you look at it long enough, The People has neutralized and is now using up this hardline incarnation of the Republican Party for a few more purposes, for some remaining dirty work, and exactly which of the two is truly stringing the other along is an interesting question.

But there's also a lot we can do to become the Party competent and worthy to lead into the future, which is the role The People has assigned Democrats (Republicans being the Party used to revel in and finish off the Past). It's a role a lot of leading Democrats are failing to comprehend- basically, the older the less accepting they are of having to be the guides to and enactors of a fully Modern, leading, society in a world increasingly Modern- freed of hard castes and caste privileges/oppressions and freed of hard theism and governed in a way structurally far more fair to the individual citizen. There's an awful lot to be done once the Right's stranglehold on national power breaks and not nearly enough Democrats ready to do or support the work that needs doing. That's what the Beltway politicians see as they look out on Democrats nationally. Gay marriage legalization, whatever your personal opinion about it, is the citadel that once taken secures all womens' rights gained. The postincarceration ex-felon disenfranchisement statutes are in effect the sources of largest diminishments of minority political civil rights and elections rights generally nationwide. There's one more fight brewing about Creationism. Once the key social divisiveness/injustice has disintegrated in the wake of such things becoming settled justly, you'd be surprised at the consensus and pressure and change and agreement on efficiencies that can be achieved in economic issues. Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country....