Blue Notes from a Red Zone

Futility?

Over the past six years, the Bush administration and its lapdogs among the Republican party have committed many sins. But perhaps the most insidious legacy was created not just by Bush and his cronies, but all the enablers among the media and among "moderate" Democrats. For three years, they all spoke with one voice, and dismissed any dissent as being irrelevant. Now,pundits, politicians and bloggers ask: "Where is the outrage? Why aren't people storming the capital? Why aren't the streets filled with people demanding change?"

Well, many, many of us are and have been furious about what is being done in our name, by our government, since the sham of an election in 2000. We have watched as years of work toward a more just, humane and environmentally safe society are callously and lightly ripped away. Private individuals have lost their rights to privacy and civil rights, while the government shrouded itself in secrecy and unlimited power. Above all, an unjust war goes on and on, one in which we sacrifice young lives in creating havoc in Iraq and a generation of new terrorists in the Middle East. We are hardly lacking for sources of outrage, and if we were, the Bush administration keeps up a steady supply of new fuel.

What saps our will to fight is the fact that we saw all this coming. Millions of Americans looked at the so-called evidence of weapons of mass destruction, and said, "this makes no sense." Hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the street trying to stop the madness. We wrote letters and columns and circulated petitions. We might as well have been sipping lemonade on the front porch. No one noticed; no one cared. An enormous protest was held in New York. C-SPAN covered it, and we watched as seas of Americans tried to get someone's attention. Even the New York Times yawned, and gave short shrift to what was going on at their front door.

All those columnists, pundits, politicians and fellow citizens who wonder why we aren't rallying now were very condescending then. The refrain heard in Washington, New York, and other political capitals was that foreign affairs and diplomacy was just too sophisticated and complicated for those left-wing nuts to grasp. Any protest about economic policy was shrugged aside as "class warfare." Liberal ideas were in disfavor even among previously liberal bastions. Liberal thought was outmoded, passe. It was time for new ideas, and new intellectual capital to become ascendant. Compassion and diplomacy were for wimps. In order to be a vigorous unitary superpower, we had to put down our words, take up our guns, and turn over our minds to a unitary executive.

Maybe I would have handled this better if there had been any intellectual content in this much-heralded "intellectual capital." As it is, I still consider "conservative think tank" to be an oxymoron, particularly when it derives from neo-conservatives. Someone who rests his or her intellectual construct on creationism is not mentally gifted, which I would define at least in part as being willing to question beliefs and consider new information.

And yet, these are the people we were supposed to defer to. Even today, one reads the Washington Post editorial pages (which I usually don't, not having the strong stomach I used to) and gathers that even if the war is wrong today, the people who protested it at the beginning are still more wrong than those who embraced it. We must still entrust the war's implementation to the people who haven't made a correct decision yet, because they have the data and the nuance, and we don't.

So frustration sets in. Every day my inbox is filled with appeals to write my Congressman, to let him know there are people who are not enamored of his stance on the issues. My immediate thought is that those organizations sending out these mass e-mails should proof their mailing lists, and not bother to send these calls for action out to people who are represented by certifiable idiots. I guarantee you, my Congressman is every bit the match for Bush in feeling self-satisfied and smug and not caring a hoot about what anyone else thinks. And my second thought, as I hit the delete icon, is that it's a shame that I feel so totally unempowered. I know it took more than Jeff Miller to make me feel this way.

Still, as I have said often, my basic personality is one of optimism, and I don't feel alone in that. It may be that those of us who mounted protests and wrote letters and signed petitions early on are still protesting in their way. It's just that our protests are on a smaller scale. Last Friday I left a secure job with a decent paycheck, in order to give more focus to my passion for a just society. On my own, I can speak more plainly, tackle obstacles more directly, and at least move my own small community a little closer to what I consider the American dream.

I may not be sounding off on national issues as much, but I am demonstrably changing my little corner, and the pace of change is picking up. Perhaps my story is being echoed all over. There are many of us who have decided not to bang our heads against the brick wall of a bubble presidency and an aloof media, but who are making our voices heard just the same. The Republicans have taught us that trickle-down theories do not work. Maybe those of us who consider ourselves liberal Democrats can prove that trickle-up theories are successful.

Postscript: It is my strong feeling that Barack Obama's experience as a community organizer puts him in far better touch with what is real and doable and necessary than years of being pandered to in Congress. The resistance many feel toward Hillary Clinton is that she can't let go of her support for a militaristic foreign policy. That isn't real, or doable, and it certainly isn't necessary. I do like John Edwards, because he left the "establishment" behind in order to see what poverty was really like, and how it can be alleviated. Perhaps 2008 will restore hope for many of us.

posted by Lenore Wilson @ 1:30 AM