prole

Then why the zero-sum bullshit?

Is part of your fundraising foot-soldier duty to play zero-sum games with all the other organizations out there trying to do good work? Why so eager to tell us all what's possible, what's a lost cause, what's effective? Competing in a shrinking pool of donor money while the problems we face proliferate?

Is this a "the one with the most lobbyists wins" kind of a game? How about a "who's the most entrenched in the Washington establishment" game or "what issues are most palatable to wealthy liberal donors" version? Hmmm, or a "which issues are least likely to threaten the status quo" spinoff? I'm not sure what your point is in trying to take as many issues off the table as possible.

Schoolin' your ass at the moment.

That's okay, lots of people have been using their imaginations for you.

Whatever it takes.

You should feel honored receive letter from Chetan.

I've changed my mind. Bring on the austerity.

I'm sick of "the left" telling capitalists and their politicians how to run capitalism better.

I might be wrong, but I've mostly understood anti-tax drivel (for working folks) as misplaced anger for stagnant wages in the face of rising prices and the fact that people are paying for things that used to be free. For middle-class white-flight refugees it's always been coded racism: "I'm not paying for those people". For the former there's an opportunity to shift the narrative. For the latter, well they can go fuck themselves.

None of which was (or is) common knowledge to most of the people attending the events. Nor were literature, events, or leadership speaking directly to a pro-corporate agenda. The people that attended those events were responding to and mobilizing on the basis of an anti-establishment message and I think that's important for the Left to recognize. Yes, it's shot through with racism and is mostly composed of white middle class men that were not so mobilized when Bush was in power. It also has the potential to appeal to a broader swath in the vacuum created by a Left that's either retreated from economic issues or is complicit in the debacle. What gains the pro-corporate teabaggers have made by peeling off working and middle class voters worried about their futures is an immediate failure of the Left to speak to, and more importantly, address those issues. Simply drawing attention to the funding sources of tea-rallies while ignoring the fact that people are actually showing up to them would be a lost opportunity to learn something.

And you don't give them enough. There was some genuine anti-establishment sentiment within the movement at the beginning and there was a great deal being said about not being coopted and "we're grassroots, we don't have a Party" and screw Sarah Palin's $400 a plate dinners. You don't hear any of that now. If they haven't been completely folded in already, they certainly will be if they're elected. It remains to be seen whether an independent, more radical strain reemerges on the right when teabagger candidates inevitably merge with the status quo "mainstream" Republicans and their material welfare continues to erode. It sure hasn't happened with liberals after the Obama disappointment...

From "End the Fed" to "Restoring America" in 60 seconds. These hoopleheads will be too dumb to figure out they got played.

MLK also grew to know through his experiences that the mere extension of political rights and equality under the law in an inherently unjust system would not result in furthering human freedom. He said so and got "caped".

Oh, you mean he didn't just put a check in the mail and wait for November?

The 20th century is rife with examples of liberal democracies slipping into barbarism during periods of economic and political chaos. You could even say its one of its key features. I remember being in school during the naval buildup to the second Iraq War. A much younger student suggested that there was no way, knowing how shaky Bush's case for war was and how much opposition there was reflected in the huge global demonstrations, that his administration would be so stupid as to go through with it. There was just no way. The 70 year old professor said she'd never seen the kind of resources expended in a buildup of such magnitude that had not resulted in a war. Given the toxic political climate currently and the direction this country has been headed for quite some time, I think that sentiment can be generalized to the American scene as a whole. You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for American fascism. You have too much faith in your institutions, Tvash. History isn't a one-way street leading toward ever greater freedom. Everything has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

I find it hard to believe that anyone with eyes open would suggest that campaign finance doesn't matter that much or that we don't have a bigger hill to climb now than we did 30 or 40 years ago. "Bought and paid for" is a phrase that rates right near the top when people are asked to describe their government. Yes, we have a long way to go in extending basic civil rights in this country and I know that's your deal, but I'm sorry, the "gay weed" issue isn't going to get us very far with the magnitude of the problems we're facing. Or maybe it's that you think the planet's not any worse off than it ever was either. As far as social networking and youtube candidates go, I would think that we'd actually be seeing some positive results for somebody other than the same elites if this really were a qualitative shift in American politics. How many "grassroots" movements do we need to see written off, ignored, or co-opted before we realize that even millions of mobilized individuals can be made irrelevant in a one-dollar-one-vote system. The resources that truly gargantuan sums of money are capable of marshalling day after day, every single day on multiple fronts to shape daily discourse from school curricula to their own "viral" videos are only outdone by the amount they're spending lobbying the politicians they've already helped elect. What is it about this you're not getting? "An organization with measurable track record of getting results"? Good thing MLK or Gandhi or any other radical-turned-watered-down-liberal-icon didn't follow your advice, where would we be then? Seriously. Do you think any of the "liburl victories" of the last 70 years you spoke of would actually hold up under the strain of the really good economic and political cataclysm we're headed towards? The teabaggers certainly don't seem apathetic, maybe left politics has been catering to liberal yuppie lifestyle horseshit and gay weed type issues too long and left the everybody else to twist in the winds of religious/patriotic/capitalist fundamentalism. Don't get me wrong, I think any gains are good gains and good work is being done, but a lot of this shit has a kind of "fiddling while Rome burns" quality about it. History is not a one-way street and it's getting late.

I heard that. Campaign finance reform is the single biggest hurdle facing meaningful reform of the political process. Public financing, open media, better access for third, fourth, fifth parties, complete transparency in private funding (if we're to have it at all), stricter conflict of interest disqualification, etc. Gotta get the money out, it's a sick joke as it stands now. While the language is there on some level (good), I don't see the "grassroots", "anti-establishment" Tea Party addressing meaningful political reform in any way whatsoever. I'd be happy to entertain examples where it seems I'm misinformed on this point. Any genuine movement for change that might have been there in the beginning has been hopelessly co-opted by the Koch/Armey money machine (what happened to "end the fed", for example?). These guys vs. Karl Rove? It's a slumber party pillow fight with real people getting locked out (again). Back to the drawing board...

There's an assumption there that "the system" is a vessel that actually works and that it's just filled with spoiled contents. If you read Hamilton, Madison, Jay, et al and their dissenters you realize that those who came out on top in those critical struggles had a very specific kind of order in mind. In that light, our current situation is not all that surprising. While we do (still) have tools at our disposal, those tools need to be put to use reforming the process itself, not fetishizing it.

I'd be reluctant to generalize about "democracy" based on an elite dominated, media-driven, capitalist State that's been stripped of a meaningful democratic practice (participation, citizenship, accountability to the governed, etc.) and replaced by a moribund duty (vote every once in a while). In a way you are certainly right: Using the word "democracy" to describe the political system we currently serves to legitimate what it actually does. We need need new language and analytical tools to describe what we actually have to work with. Plutocracy, oligarchy, etc., while off the mark, are certainly better equipped to an analysis of our situation than an uncritical acceptance of "democracy" as a descriptive term. From a practical standpoint, democracy is not a static end-point as the punditry would have us believe. It's an active practice whose health can be continually assessed and improved upon. While our political units and our economic networks are as large as they are, representative decision making is necessary (have you ever sat through a consensus meeting?). Keeping that process "representative" as opposed to an every-four-year-rubber-stamp-by-the-people-for-politicians-to-do-fuck-all is a question of democratic health (educated mobilized actively engaged citizenry) as well as maintaining substantive equality with regard to access to the political system and making changes to political charters when they're designed to inhibit the same. "People power" is all there is in a society composed of people, your cry in the wilderness for a "post-political" politics is a non sequitur and better suited to the philosophical ether or primitivist pipe dreams than the here and now.

America's version of Heinrich Himmler is back to restore the Republican Reich. Is this the moderate white-knight the teabagger skeptical within the GOP were hoping for?

Have you sent out a press release?

Sounds like Fairweather's buckin' to put America on the losing end of another ass whoopin'!

Stay The Course.