If another liberal group asks me to protest . . .
An open letter to Move On and PFAW
I planned to write this letter to Move On and PFAW today - and then I realized that I am, after all, an occasional contributor to a BLOG. I may as well use this pulpit to make my point given my E-mail inbox is screaming about Harriet Miers this morning.
Readers, I'm a Liberal's Liberal - a veritable progressive. Energy, economics, equality, sustainability: across the board, I am a Liberal's Liberal.
I think the feds need to force the MPG standards up to an average of 40 over the next two years; I think Honda and Toyota should get rewarded for their hybrid efforts; I think the BIG THREE need to face payback for their 1990s stupidity that helped lead to today's petroleum issues. I think a progressive tax investment contribution is the way to go - the wealthy, despite cries otherwise, use more human, natural, and national resources than the rest of us - and I think that all the taxes should go into one big kitty to ensure even distribution rather than our current system that offers biased payouts to higher-income areas. I support full-on gay marriage, the return of the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment), and I call visibly-bigoted people nasty names right to their faces. I want to see the nation invest in recycling human waste, food-waste, animal waste, and other biomass to (1) help produce methane for combustion and (2) eliminate the need for the use of petrochemicals in agriculture - and agriculture is, after all, our National Backbone: we all eat, and there are always left-overs and after-effects that we can use productively, rather than discard as we do now, to do nothing more than pollute our waterways.
Beyond that (and plenty more that would take too much space to mention), I want Bush out, I would just love to smash Bill "Loofah" O'Reilly in the mouth, and would pay any amount of money to read Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter were found together, both ODd on opioids, in a sleazy hotel . . . with Coulter tied to the bed and Rush suspended over her via straps on a pair of rubber pants (and I'd not put that sort of behavior past those two vile bastards, either).
And I am also sick of this knee-jerk, go-out-and-protest, "no agenda or planning at all" response on my side of the political fence.
Newsflash to PFAW and MoveOn: Nobody gives a shit if we protest. The media ignores us, the citizens ignore us, the politicians ignore us, and the world goes on. Sure, it worked for Cindy Sheehan, but we don't all have children to sacrifice in Iraq to give us credibility and, sadly, her unfortunately-dead son is why she has credibility.
Notice how the Mainstream Media photographs protesters at long-distance to make it seem as if there are so few? Notice how it's always the pink-haired, pierced-and-tattooed Goth types who are in the center of the images?
Notice how little happens?
Notice how we keep losing?
The 1960s and 1970s tactics are dead, Liberal PACs. Wake the hell up and embrace it.
Sure, *VISITING* our elected representatives works a tad better. So does personally calling their offices.
But, visiting and calling are still not enough.
We need what Howard Dean wanted - namely, a UNIFIED Liberal front with an AGENDA and a plan to take productive, not just symbolic, action. We then need to work in our towns and cities to implement that agenda.
Because, after all, we keep losing: Since 1998, elections have not favored us Liberals well.
Our losing tactics are such that we keep losing elections despite a tanking economy, tangible effects of global warming, skyrocketing energy prices, the Plame leak, the Downing Street Memo, the DeLay indictments, Frist's missteps, the war quagmire, the 9-11 intelligence failures, Cheney’s secret energy dealings, a federal deficit well out of control, a net loss of jobs, white-collar (forget blue-collar: those are gone) outsourcing, CAFTA, a "Bankruptcy Reform Bill" that is an utter joke, an end to EPA environmental enforcement, a gutted FDA, and the orgy of corporate giveaways.
We need to get a clue.
What we Liberals need is a good leader - a smart, savvy, Liberal's Liberal who is not concerned about focusing on how a bunch of hemp-wearing, nut-and-berry chewing, bunny-hugging nitwits on our side of the fence "feel." We need to take solid stands and offer viable solutions, NOT step to the center (and thus kowtow to the right) every time.
And I mean "Liberal," with no apologies. Truthfully, I fall on the Anti-Authoritarian Socialist side of the Political Compass Scale (Economic Left/Right: -9.13, Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.56), so that makes me very damn liberal. And I don't wear hemp, I do eat meat, and I hug nobody: I'm a Liberal's Liberal and I am a damn pragmatic one with, admittedly, a bit of an edgy attitude and a nasty mouth.
And while I wait to see if we can produce a decent leader, the next person who screams, "Protest Harriet Miers! Protest Harriet Miers!" gets a swift kick in the pants from me.
Both Wesley Clark and Howard Dean showed us how to be strong Liberals. Barack Obama actually succeeded at being a strong liberal. George Lakoff explains how to speak like a strong liberal. In my role with the local MoveOn PAC, I thought and behaved like a strong liberal. And I discovered it CAN work, providing the folks on the street like you and me get sufficiently motivated to do something productive.
And you folks still stuck in the 1960s?
Kiss off!
It's pretty damn clear it ain't working DESPITE the Horror-Show Gravy Train of failure the conservatives are giving us: it's time we grew up and learned how to play an honest, hard-assed, aggressive game of hardball.
So far, playing nice has not only gotten us thrown out of the driver's seat, we're not even at a gas-station pay phone: this state of affairs MUST change!
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I planned to write this letter to Move On and PFAW today - and then I realized that I am, after all, an occasional contributor to a BLOG. I may as well use this pulpit to make my point given my E-mail inbox is screaming about Harriet Miers this morning.
Readers, I'm a Liberal's Liberal - a veritable progressive. Energy, economics, equality, sustainability: across the board, I am a Liberal's Liberal.
I think the feds need to force the MPG standards up to an average of 40 over the next two years; I think Honda and Toyota should get rewarded for their hybrid efforts; I think the BIG THREE need to face payback for their 1990s stupidity that helped lead to today's petroleum issues. I think a progressive tax investment contribution is the way to go - the wealthy, despite cries otherwise, use more human, natural, and national resources than the rest of us - and I think that all the taxes should go into one big kitty to ensure even distribution rather than our current system that offers biased payouts to higher-income areas. I support full-on gay marriage, the return of the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment), and I call visibly-bigoted people nasty names right to their faces. I want to see the nation invest in recycling human waste, food-waste, animal waste, and other biomass to (1) help produce methane for combustion and (2) eliminate the need for the use of petrochemicals in agriculture - and agriculture is, after all, our National Backbone: we all eat, and there are always left-overs and after-effects that we can use productively, rather than discard as we do now, to do nothing more than pollute our waterways.
Beyond that (and plenty more that would take too much space to mention), I want Bush out, I would just love to smash Bill "Loofah" O'Reilly in the mouth, and would pay any amount of money to read Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter were found together, both ODd on opioids, in a sleazy hotel . . . with Coulter tied to the bed and Rush suspended over her via straps on a pair of rubber pants (and I'd not put that sort of behavior past those two vile bastards, either).
And I am also sick of this knee-jerk, go-out-and-protest, "no agenda or planning at all" response on my side of the political fence.
Newsflash to PFAW and MoveOn: Nobody gives a shit if we protest. The media ignores us, the citizens ignore us, the politicians ignore us, and the world goes on. Sure, it worked for Cindy Sheehan, but we don't all have children to sacrifice in Iraq to give us credibility and, sadly, her unfortunately-dead son is why she has credibility.
Notice how the Mainstream Media photographs protesters at long-distance to make it seem as if there are so few? Notice how it's always the pink-haired, pierced-and-tattooed Goth types who are in the center of the images?
Notice how little happens?
Notice how we keep losing?
The 1960s and 1970s tactics are dead, Liberal PACs. Wake the hell up and embrace it.
Sure, *VISITING* our elected representatives works a tad better. So does personally calling their offices.
But, visiting and calling are still not enough.
We need what Howard Dean wanted - namely, a UNIFIED Liberal front with an AGENDA and a plan to take productive, not just symbolic, action. We then need to work in our towns and cities to implement that agenda.
Because, after all, we keep losing: Since 1998, elections have not favored us Liberals well.
Our losing tactics are such that we keep losing elections despite a tanking economy, tangible effects of global warming, skyrocketing energy prices, the Plame leak, the Downing Street Memo, the DeLay indictments, Frist's missteps, the war quagmire, the 9-11 intelligence failures, Cheney’s secret energy dealings, a federal deficit well out of control, a net loss of jobs, white-collar (forget blue-collar: those are gone) outsourcing, CAFTA, a "Bankruptcy Reform Bill" that is an utter joke, an end to EPA environmental enforcement, a gutted FDA, and the orgy of corporate giveaways.
We need to get a clue.
What we Liberals need is a good leader - a smart, savvy, Liberal's Liberal who is not concerned about focusing on how a bunch of hemp-wearing, nut-and-berry chewing, bunny-hugging nitwits on our side of the fence "feel." We need to take solid stands and offer viable solutions, NOT step to the center (and thus kowtow to the right) every time.
And I mean "Liberal," with no apologies. Truthfully, I fall on the Anti-Authoritarian Socialist side of the Political Compass Scale (Economic Left/Right: -9.13, Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.56), so that makes me very damn liberal. And I don't wear hemp, I do eat meat, and I hug nobody: I'm a Liberal's Liberal and I am a damn pragmatic one with, admittedly, a bit of an edgy attitude and a nasty mouth.
And while I wait to see if we can produce a decent leader, the next person who screams, "Protest Harriet Miers! Protest Harriet Miers!" gets a swift kick in the pants from me.
Both Wesley Clark and Howard Dean showed us how to be strong Liberals. Barack Obama actually succeeded at being a strong liberal. George Lakoff explains how to speak like a strong liberal. In my role with the local MoveOn PAC, I thought and behaved like a strong liberal. And I discovered it CAN work, providing the folks on the street like you and me get sufficiently motivated to do something productive.
And you folks still stuck in the 1960s?
Kiss off!
It's pretty damn clear it ain't working DESPITE the Horror-Show Gravy Train of failure the conservatives are giving us: it's time we grew up and learned how to play an honest, hard-assed, aggressive game of hardball.
So far, playing nice has not only gotten us thrown out of the driver's seat, we're not even at a gas-station pay phone: this state of affairs MUST change!
