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Edited on Mon Jun-23-08 11:59 PM by Two Americas
I am one often accused of being "negative." I would much rather talk positive and constructive political ideas, but that is very difficult when you have to wade through pollyanish and child-like "think positive" stuff, and deal with the pervasive libertarian "personal choice" approaches, and the promotion of "free market" ideas. All of that is antithetical to what the left and the Democratic party traditionally supported and promoted, and it is not compatible with constructive left wing solutions or even with political solutions of any kind.
So let's talk politics as though we were still Democrats, and get genuinely all hopeful and positive, rather than acting like adolescents cheer leading our high school football team or having a crush on the latest teen idol, shall we? Here is a start...
1. Public transportation
Moving the billions that go into highway repair and construction into public transportation attacks environmental and energy challenges at the same time. If you are not free to move, if you cannot get to work, without paying the troll under the bridge blood money, you are not free at all. Sprawl, environmental destruction - for what? So the powerful few can turn us all into isolated little consuming unites, easily fleeced and easily terrorized. We have a right to move about without continual oversight and monitoring by law enforcement and profiteering by the few.
2. Restore the public utility infrastructure
Basic services were once tightly regulated. The thinking was that a private company should not be given monopoly control over basic public services necessary for survival, and then not be watched for the sake of public benefit and welfare.
3. House people
Wheee it sure is fun getting wealthy off our real estate investments - those things we once quaintly called "homes" where people "lived" - but the price of people being homeless, while millions of others are terrorized and orient their entire lives around the fear of becoming homeless only serves the few at the expense of many. House everyone, and house them now. This is achievable, but not without the political will. Creating public support for this - which should be easy to do if we pout our minds to it - is our job. Let's get "positive" and get busy.
4. Feed people
Our public agricultural infrastructure has been under continual assault from the right wingers for decades and is now teetering near collapse. The purpose of food is to feed people, not to turn a quick buck on creating artificial scarcity and hoarding and pushing producers to the brink of extinction.
Regulate the brokers and wheelers and dealers and reign them in. Fund ag research, restore public safety inspection, insist on fair trade, reign in the global corporate players who are manipulating the food supply.
5. Protect the public assets
The country does not belong to the wealthy few who can afford to buy it, it belongs to all of us and to future generations. No more privatization.
6. Return the public airwaves back to the public
I hear Democrats and liberals say "talk is of no use, we nixed to do something!" and in general devalue discussion and communication, as though it played the same role in politics as it does in commercial market=ibng - just some words to sell someone on something, The opposition knows what we forgot - the pen is mightier than the sword. They spend more money and effort on controlling the media than they do anything else, because they know that is the path to absolute power over us. The opposition controls the media. They control our thinking that way. They control the wealth and power in the country that way. We make lame efforts to play their game and buy our way into the public thinking. We can never win that game. As with all of these solutions, politics is the tool in our hands.
Why does the right wing need to control the media? To get their "message" across? No. They have no message. They have no philosophy. They want to make sure that no serious discussions ever happen, that no one does any thinking. The airwaves belong to the public, and they are for the main purpose of preserving democracy through public discussion and education. Why shou;ld we let them be stolen from us for the purpose of benefiting only the few and harming the public and destroying democracy? Why do we roll over for this?
7. Organize, organize, organize
After decades of union leaders abandoning recruitment, organizing and no longer standing strong for labor, in lieu of a top-down management of the unions that mainly saw funneling money to Democratic party candidates (hey! better than Republicans, right?) as doing their job, there are now embers here and there of a new democratic grass roots labor movement starting. Workers - that is almost all of us and everyone we know - are vulnerable as never before. The workers are the producers in the country, the ones that create value, the ones that produce wealth. That traditionally has been the position of all but the most extreme right wingers. We have abandoned the fight for the workers, and we could make tremendous progress in this area with very little effort compared to the time and money we waste on various liberal causes and useless politicians.
If every person reading this became a labor organizer, first and foremost starting tomorrow, that would be the impetus to move every single progressive issue forward powerfully and effectively and get out of the funk of anxiety and confusion. Politics is about power and wealth, who has it and who does not. The wealthy and powerful few are destroying the country for their own private gain at public expense. We must organize to fight back. Class warfare is already happening, and is nothing to fear. The problem is that we are losing and losing badly, mainly because we are not even showing up for the battle, but instead are isolated and alienated individuals scrambling around trying to find personal survival strategies. Untied we stand, divided we fall.
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