Also, dude, on the election tip. I think the Nazi metaphor for this election's result is inaccurate and all it does is push a fight-or-flight persecution complex. Also, it's coded America-bashing, which is...completely understandable, but not *helpful* in the long run. I think particularly in the fight for gay civil rights, we're looking at our Jim Crow laws, not Weimar Germany. I don't think gay sex is turning illegal again anytime soon, much like slavery's not coming back. But I do think the gay marriage amendments in the states are Jim Crow for queers. And I think there's probably going to be a Plessy v. Ferguson before there's a Brown v. Board. I don't know if that helps or changes anything [it's not meant to be a HAPPY thought], but I do think that it's the more accurate comparison. Americans, if nothing else, are too lazy to suit up and become brownshirts.
(Seriously. Think of your favorite Hannity-loving troll who loved the Passion. Are they *really* going to miss Survivor to march on us? Probably not. Will they passively watch such horrors as lynchings (Matthew Shepherd), cluck, "that's horrible" and then go to prayer meeting to get really bad Bible scholarship? (NB: A lot of the reason why I hate the Evangelical Christian dickwads is that their Christian scholarship is crap. If you're going to use your Bible to oppress me, retard, it would help if I couldn't *kick your ass* at knowing the Bible. Thank you, drive through, go back to watching football) Much more likely. And it explains how I feel as a bi-female...I am feeling a little embattled as my well-meaning straight friends are kind of like, "it sucks...but less for you, because you can 'pass' and live in a Northern state." And it's like, yes, I can pass...but that's an ugly thing you're saying if you think about it in your pleas for compromise and slow movement.)
Jim Crow, not Nazi Germany. It's the right narrative, and there are ways to think about resistance to a Jim Crow regime as compared to Dubya as Hitler, and it will, if you are still playing nice with centrists, give you a metaphor that will not immediately get you the "WTF? No." look when you call Ashcroft a fascist. We need to stop scaring ourselves.
I mean, it's why I love y'all centrists, but seriously, no. You people are the girl who promises to give you sex if you *just* change this...and just this little other thing. And you know what? I draw the line at my civil rights, as new as I am to them. I am not going to make your wussy-ass feelings that the only good gov't is gridlock feel better over my safety and civil rights. Cuz bitch, please. If you're fiscally conservative but socially liberal, well for fuck's sake. That *is* the Democratic party. What do you want them to do, bring you cookies that say, "now with 20% less gun rights lobbying?" Progressive values with passion, not more of the same pandering to the centrist cockteases. (Sorry, Melissa. I'm trying for less masculinist metaphors because I'm ashamed of how many I use, but they do have a certain visceral effect.)
Anyway, that's today's Dose of Reasonable Hope With Snark. In other news, I've decided my small act of resistance is to put my money where my mouth is, so to speak, and switch to Linux. Microsoft doesn't deserve my money, I don't support their monopoly, and I don't game, so I have absolutely no need of Windows and the constant virus threats. I also suspect that I will become a card-carrying member of the ACLU very soon, and that the bike I keep threatening to buy will become a reality.
...and it's not much, and I do need to find at least one rl political group to do work with (which is HARD for me because of the not liking people thing), and I think, given the echo chamber nature of fannish LJs, you do too? But that's one less box contributing to the Micro$oft empire. That's one more membership fee to the ACLU, who represent fuckhead like Hannity as well as us godless pinkos. That's 25-50 miles a week less pollution in the air if I bike to school and back and on light grocery/restaurant runs and back, and it's a little bit less weight on my soul wearing me down.
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- Music:Gil Scott-Heron: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
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jennyo- Jennifer-Oksana
- Jennifer-Oksana's Reborn
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Absolutely. And yes, I think it's more useful, more instructive, to look at it that way than to skip right over to Nazis. Because to think we're almost in Nazi-ville makes us seem a lot more helpless than we actually are at this point. There's a lot of work we need to do to fight this separate-but-equal bullshit, and it behooves us to look at what power we do actually have, rather than be paralyzed by fear...
I'm adopting that as my motto for the next few weeks, and shall point inquiries to your LJ.
...no. Just, world of no. I'm sorry, but justice wins over taxes, especially given the very not-conservative economic practices of this administration that should be pretty obvious (what "conservative" laissez-faire capitalists gives a 15 billion dollar bailout to industry? The hand of the market spoke, didn't it? Oh, wait...*snort*). And if it means making people uncomfortable, then so be it. Making them comfortable didn't not pass any of those Jim Crow laws on Tuesday, now, did it?
I mean, it's why I love y'all centrists, but seriously, no. You people are the girl who promises to give you sex if you *just* change this...and just this little other thing. And you know what? I draw the line at my civil rights, as new as I am to them. I am not going to make your wussy-ass feelings that the only good gov't is gridlock feel better over my safety and civil rights. Cuz bitch, please. If you're fiscally conservative but socially liberal, well for fuck's sake. That *is* the Democratic party.
You know what? Having publically characterized myself previously as a centrist and a moderate, I'm going to step up here and disagree with you. Because, no. And frankly, I'm insulted -- but that's okay, because I'm still going to argue my point, and this is not to be construed as a personal attack on you, just so's we're all clear here.
It is *NOT* the Democratic party, not all of it. The public voice and common association with the Democrats is becoming increasingly more extremist in an opposition reaction to the Republican right. Which I understand as a reactionary mechanism, mind you, but it's not the way to collect the vote from the middle of the country. Did you see this Times opinion piece? There's a lot of validity there.
Being moderate does not mean that I immediately write off civil rights and social values, or that they do not matter, because they DO -- and very much, at that. It DOES, however, mean that other things matter to me as well -- things that fall more in line with the publically characterized "republican" designation. (Did you know that there are such people as "liberal Republicans?") It means that I recognize what both sides are thinking, and how they got there, and why each works for so many. That's key for finding the way towards reaching centrists, actually.
Look at any given bell curve -- extremes are just that. Discount the center at your peril. No form of extremism can survive on its own for long, whether conservative or progressive/liberal.
And by the way, it's this sort of vitriolic attack that makes centrists want to say, "Well, fuck YOU, bitch, I'm doing the best I can to find balance in a crazed world. You don't get that I'm trying? You don't want me? Fine."
And how many bones do I have to toss these "well-meaning" people before they wake up? Gun rights have basically been abandoned by Democrats; Democrats gave us the budget surplus, even the so-called unelectable "crazy Howard Dean" was an effective fiscal conservative who balanced the Vermont budget, as compared to a candidate who's running up the biggest bills in history and pushing Congress to *raise* the American debt ceiling. How much consciousness-raising do I have to do on things that are blindingly obvious (is the average American better off under Bush II or Clinton? does a moral man wink and nod at torture? are we more secure with that 350 tons of explosives missing?)? How many "unimportant" battles about civil rights do I have to surrender to convince these people of whatever they're so afraid of? Especially when, as a blue-stater, I'm already subsidizing them with my federal tax dollars?
The Federal level and the leadership levels of the Democratic party, despite the spin from AM radio, works exactly on the principles that you and every "we have to bend to the centrists!" theorists claim should hand us a resounding majority. By your theories, people should be able to recognize that the principles of the Republican party have been shanghai'd by extremists. Neither has happened.
Why, then, do I have to tie myself to a proposition that in real-world situations has demonstrably failed to work? Especially when the writing is very much on the wall that the next "bones" to be thrown to these centrist moderates who I still have to call "good people" despite the fact that they are apparently so spectacularly deficient in basic reading/viewing comprehension that they still believe the old saw, "Democrats will raise my taxes and vote HUGE pork-barrel projects!" and will vote against civil rights because while I'm sure they don't actively wish "those people" harm, it's just not God's will to make a huge change like *that* and impact a holy institution like marriage?
Do you understand that I, as part of the population who is being sacrificed for this theory, would actually like to see *any* proof that my sacrifice is doing a damn thing, and that I'm offended that I should compromise on *my* civil rights next for an argument that has no more evidence in its favor than one of Sean's right now? I supported John Kerry, despite misgivings, on what is basically your argument -- the American center wants a moderate, not a scary liberal like Howard Dean. Not only did he not win, most of the moderate, centrist Dems put against extremist Republicans didn't win, and now we have a fully Republican federal government.
So yes. If there was *proof* that appealing to moderates worked, maybe I wouldn't be so fucking sick and tired of being told that civil rights matter less than taxes and I have to soothe a bunch of skittish people who were doing a lot better under Clinton that I don't want their money or their Bible. And I'm especially tired of being told that these people are "good-hearted people." I'm sure there were a lot of nice, good-hearted people who loved their families, worked hard, who also firmly believed that "those people" shouldn't drink at their water fountains, that a woman's place was in the home, and that queer people just shouldn't call it married.
I believe history demonstrates that "justice too long delayed is justice denied." And I believe pandering to the center will not bring justice. The great progresses of the 1960s and 1970s didn't come from reaching to the center, and I cannot believe that this battle will be any different, and I will no longer simply soothe the feelings of those who will support an administration who condoned torture of combatants, who denies the rights not only of gays, but tries to roll back the rights we earned so dearly in those civil rights battles two generations ago, because moderates are unable to see past the smokescreen of "but the Democrats will raise my taxes."
* Not All Centrists/Moderates Voted For Bush. The nation appears rather polarized.
* Not all centrist/moderates find sacrificing civil rights even remotely acceptable. I am one of these, for example.
* There are those in the center who see the extremist Republicans as dangerously power-crazed, etc., and who also see the extremist Democrats as viciously elitist and hypocritical. This group fluctuates back and forth based on perception at the time, I think. Perception has a surprising amount of power.
I'm NOT saying that the Democrats/progressives need to sacrifice their views or beliefs. I AM saying that the voice of same needs to find a way to appeal to the center in order to get the point across. (Michael Moore as spokesperson, for example, is not that way.)
Does that clarify matters?
1) there are far fewer "centrists" than centrists believe and that there very well may be an unbridgeable gap between them and both major parties as it stands; I think in a three-way battle between Hillary, Jeb, and a John McCain/Conservative Southern Dem candidate, it would break 37% Jeb, 34% Hilary, and 29% McCain. There are a *lot* of scary-ass theocrats, and the sooner we stop pretending the theocrats don't really exist and don't have a death-grip on Republican politics and Christian power (ie, there will be more Coburns and DeMints and Keyes-type Republicans before there are fewer), the better. This is not to say there are not economic conservatives who believe in rights, or that Christians are bigots. But the Republicans and Christians with power right now are a bunch of Jim Crow bigots with no sense, and it would appear that centrists for some reason believe they are the lesser of two evils.
2) Progressives have done much, much more of the compromising with candidates and it's earned us bupkiss. When a crazy-ass wingnut like Coburn beats a conservative Dem like Carson, and that pattern holds for every race where that situation is duplicated except in Colorado, and more importantly, with the presidency? It's time to re-examine the common wisdom that people crave moderates.
3) Centrists are not breaking for compromise Democrats, even when the compromise Democrats are speaking their language. No, a California Democrat is probably not that interested in centrists, but you don't have to be here. However, these South Carolina, Oklahoma, Alaska Democrats? Were not speaking hippie. And if all that it takes to scare a centrist is Michael Moore when the other side has Rush, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Alan Keyes, et cetera? Then again, the proposition that centrists will break in a defintive way for Democrats seems flawed. Centrists seem to find excuses to vote Republican far quicker than they do Democrat, irregardless of evidence.
Invoking Nazis never ever works. I've made some good progress with my husband - who is more conservative than me, and a little nervous about gay people, to be honest (repressed sysadmin that he is) - by comparing the gay marriage issue to that of interracial marriage. This is a metaphor that he can understand and agree with, though he argues that the country at large is not yet ready to accept gay marriage.
I mean, I feel a little bad about all my nice friends I'm alienating, but this is a new round of Jim Crow. We are not going to overcome by shouting, "wait!" because it's never worked, and it's not working now.