Acceptance & Surrender works fine in 12-Step Programs...But not in politics!
As we sit in stunned disbelief (damn it sometimes cliches serve just because they are so freekin' apt!) while the Senate Democrats cower on their backs and whimper with little squirts of piss as "Benedict" Joe Lieberman commands them to fetch him a castrated health reform bill, which, in the long run will favor the very companies we set out to regulate, some Democrats are counseling that we should moderate our tone and accept what we can get.
I so disagree and see very clearly why progressives keep getting the nasty end of the stick. The faint-hearted among us are willing to accept the droppings from the table like cringing house dogs. Incrementalism and gradualism is anything but progress. It is rather like taking a step sideways when your opposition is racing full-tilt to the finish line.
Essential moral imperative, not to mention basic human decency, demands that we as a nation provide health, protection, wellness and succor for our poor, our disadvantaged, our children, our older people and all others needing help. And to say to these people, "Be patient, we're making progress" in the face of resistance from right-wing reactionaries, insurance Tsars and drug oligarchs is disingenuous and self-delusional at best and outright cruel at worst!
In court one might enter a "plea" and win. In life and politics, one gets what one demands. And, to effectively exercise one's demands one must have a base of strength and power...this ongoing health care fiasco demonstrates very clearly just how weak we are.
For way too long progressives and liberals and various forms of populists have acted as supplicants and in return we have been sneered at, vilified and/or over looked and neglected.
Frankly the time for patience and moderation is long past, those have availed us nothing. Unless we progressives get busy, active and involved at the precinct level of the Democratic Party and work to build a progressive strategy of getting "progressives" in party, and local, county, state and national elective offices we will continue to be sold out by country-club, Chamber-of-Commerce Democrats who are way too comfortable in the presence of bankers and corporate executives.
Someone, whom I respect and like, recently called me a zealot. Well, by name of the goddess, I liked that...because were it not for zealots, just quick a historical eye-blink ago, we would all be sipping tea and eating cucumber sandwiches at three in the afternoon.
Fine! Here we are at the watershed moment for our generation and the tail end of the depression and WWII generation failing our children and grandchildren through moderation and capitulation.
Kill the Bill! It is meaningless unless some White Knight emerges to save it. Kill it and prepare for "die-ins" on the home lawns of the opposing Senators, set up free clinics in the parking lots of the drug and insurance companies, and for the sake of whatever you find holy, find, recruit and get elected to party and political office progressives and liberals who will work for the people rather than against them.
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