Optimism of the spirit

I have to remind myself from time to time that things don’t really change except for the better over the long haul. For instance, in an interview I was reading this morning of Gilbert Achbar and Noam Chomsky by Stephen Shalom, they made the point that antisemitism in the United States, so prevalent up until the 1950’s, is virtually non-existent. Barack Obama is a pseudo-liberal and de facto right winger, but he is also a half-black president. That would have been unthinkable fifty years ago.

Yes, we have many problems, but we have always had many problems. Each generation has to deal with a complicated world, and what I have come to realize is the problem of the sociopath in public life. Sociopaths are always with us, and they generally manage to work themselves into positions of power, usually within the business world, but often enough too in politics and the military. The dumb ones go into crime. The solution to that problem is not to do away with them, as we cannot do that, but rather to contain them. In the wake of the Great Depression, by means of high marginal tax rates and progressive welfare policies, we did just that. But lessons don’t last forever, generations pass, and we have to re-learn them. It is painful, it takes time. We are a long way from out of this.

Sociopaths in power aside, our first and biggest problem is the Democratic Party, and what Harry Truman referred to as “Trojan Horse Democrats”. Listening to talk radio, as I so often do, I see there is an attitude out there that simply says that President Obama needs to get with the program, to bypass his advisers or replace them, to come out of his shell, to be himself. They don’t get it. This is him. He is a DLC Democrat, or a corporatist. He said what he had to say to get elected, but he did not mean a word of it. He lied. He had corporate and corporate media support throughout the campaign, and that is why. They allowed him a long leash to say progressive things knowing full well he would not implement anything.

Hillary Clinton would behave in exactly the same way. That’s why the two of them were considered the “viable” candidates, and why they were allowed to fight it out. The outcome didn’t matter to the power brokers. The game was rigged.

Both Clinton(s) and Obama are very smart people who intuitively understand the system. There’s no back room dealing necessary, though the campaigns they ran were plainly and painfully dishonest, manipulative and propagandistic. They are Trojan Horses. As Harry Truman reminded us below, we can always count on Republicans to be themselves and to self-destruct. Let them be. What we need are Democrats who are real progressives and liberals, who mean what they say, who fight for what they believe in.

Such Democrats exist. They are not many in number. In realistically assessing our position, progressives need to do an honest tally of how many are on their side in Congress. Eighty House members? Twenty senators? Fifteen? Not enough to filibuster, unfortunately. That’s why Democrats don’t use the filibuster. There are more than sixty votes available to push forward the right wing agenda. All that is going on right now is perception management, to make the right wing agenda look like a liberal agenda. That was done with health care, war, and Wall Street. Bill Clinton was good, and Obama apparently sucks.

That works in our favor. Massachusetts figured it out. Unfortunately, they were offered a Trojan Horse Democratic candidate in Coakely, a recipient of AHIP and PhRMA money, and so opted for the only reasonable alternative. I would have done the same.

Our two political options at this time, politically, are real Democrats and third party candidates. It is hard to know who the real Democrats are, as so many of them lie about their positions when running for office. So it’s a matter of character judgment. For instance, Montana’s Max Baucus is obviously a man of low worth, and Jon Tester apparently so too. In Colorado, it is Michael Bennett who is the Trojan Horse. He will be replaced by Gale Norton this year.

Fair enough. Vote them out. There’s nothing to be gained by keeping them in. In fact, Trojan Horses impede progress. The “lesser evil” is in truth the greater evil.

But politics and organization are two different things. Too much energy goes in to politics, and not enough in organization. Far more than good Democrats, right now we need community organizers. If we get back to basics,and build from the ground up, and watch out for lying Trojan Horse Democrats, over the long run, things will improve, as they have in the past.

By the way, I don’t know that I’ve ever mentioned this, but Democrats are the problem. They don’t give us real alternatives, and absorb all of our organizational energy in the process. Have I said that before?

Anyway, here’s Harry Truman, and good day to you.

I’ve seen it happen time after time. When the Democratic candidate allows himself to be put on the defensive and starts apologizing for the New Deal and the fair Deal, and says he really doesn’t believe in them, he is sure to lose. The people don’t want a phony Democrat. If it’s a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat, and I don’t want any phony Democratic candidates in this campaign.

But when a Democratic candidate goes out and explains what the New Deal and fair Deal really are — when he stands up like a man and puts the issues before the people — then Democrats can win, even in places where they have never won before. It has been proven time and again.

We are getting a lot of suggestions to the effect that we ought to water down our platform and abandon parts of our program. These, my friends, are Trojan horse suggestions. I have been in politics for over 30 years, and I know what I am talking about, and I believe I know something about the business. One thing I am sure of: never, never throw away a winning program. This is so elementary that I suspect the people handing out this advice are not really well-wishers of the Democratic Party.

More than that, I don’t believe they have the best interests of the American people at heart. There is something more important involved in our program than simply the success of a political party.

The rights and the welfare of millions of Americans are involved in the pledges made in the Democratic platform…. And those rights and interests must not be betrayed.

These are some of the principles for which the Democratic Party stands…. We stand for better education, better health, greater opportunities for all. We stand for fair play and decency, for freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and the cherished principle that a man is innocent until he is proven guilty.

Taken together, these principles are the articles of the liberal faith. I am sure that the liberal faith is the political faith of the great majority of Americans. It sometimes happens that circumstances of time and place combine to deny its expression. But the faith is there, and the reactionaries can never hope to have any but temporary advantage in this country.