Inclusion And Time

I've been having a *great* time reading the diaries over at Daily Kos and at FireDog Lake.  The diaries at FDL mostly follow lockstep with Jane Hamsher's position that the Senate HCR Bill must die, and now, that Raum Emmanual must suffer.  Notice:  I don't consider that a bad thing.  Readers and diarists should reflect the interest of the lead bloggers if community is to be maintained.  If there is a common element of loyalty among tho0se diaries, it is that the Kos mantra of "more and better Democrats" is deeply flawed.

The diaries at the Great Orange Satan, on the other hand, are all over the map.  There are the Hamsher attacks, the Christmas well wishes, the attacks on Obama, the defenses of Obama ... seriously, it's hard to keep up.  But I did find 2 that made an interesting juxtaposition, at least to me.

First, this recommended diary from clammyc, extols the virtues of what efforts have been made by Hamsher and the FDL crowd.  She's right, as far as it goes.  The Left Flank has been very instrumental in moving the debate to the left.  I remember George McGovern talking 20 (?) years ago about the possibility of a national health insurance offering and thinking that was a helluva great idea.  Now we have a term for that, the Public Option, and I've wasted many hours debating with the right about what it could be and what it can do for us.  What the Left Flank has done is steer away from the wingnut talking point of 'Gubmint takeovers' and 'socialism' to the idea that the Public Option is a necessary component of requiring people to purchase insurance from  'somebody'.  It's an idea that people felt excluded from in the beginning, and as the debate evolved, became more palatable.  Some people began to see that that wasn't a fringe idea, but rather something that might be "uniquely American" in that it fostered competition and kept costs down.  That that effort was unsuccessful (for now) is beside the point.  The Left Flank helped to mainstream a fringe idea, one that will likely serve as a target for goal in the future.

This diary, by Nashville Fan, clearly documents how the Left Flank served to be self-defeating.  It's no mystery to any who read what I write here that this drama has been played out in micro-scale right here in the Montana blogotubes.  Those who feel inclusion in clammyc's "Left Flank" clearly wanted to protect their purity of essence from the fluoride of Democrats.  So, they made assumptions of that purity, and armed with a suspicion that every action would be "triangulation", they immediately began to alienate those who could have been their biggest allies in this fight.  Rather than invite inclusion, they immediately demanded service to 'principle' with little or no regard for who they damaged along the way.  Progressives were split into camps, and the usual liberal circular firing squad was formed before any movement took place.  The comments to that diary are fascinating because they play out the same rules set at the beginning.  Capitulate to the purists or you have  capitulated to the corporations and are an enemy to be insulted with claims of childishness for recognizing what actually took place.

What actually took place is that we have a really crappy Senate bill that could have been worse except for the left flank, and could have been better if they hadn't tried so hard to scare people and piss them off.  Now, we have the left flank joining the teabaggers in calling for the firing of administration officials and even as far as the impeachment of the back-stabbing President.  If you are rational, you have to ask yourself the question:  When I agree that my enemy is insane, and I hope for the same outcomes of my enemy, am I all that mentally put together?

Of course, the handy way around that obvious flaw is to ignore time.  Take a slice here or there, and one can justify anything to be rational.  Obama set us up the bomb because he said he liked the public option and then claimed he didn't.  Contradictory slices in time with no sense of what has actually happened.  Time X - Time Y = anyone who disagrees with me is a moral failure!?!  Does this make sense to anybody?  Should it?

Here's a better equation.  My actions, feelings and thoughts at time X - my actions feelings and thoughts at time Y equal jack shit in expectation of another.

Obama did campaign on the public option and yet he didn't.  That doesn't mean he's nefariously plotting against you.  He's plotting to get re-elected, which is exactly what politicians have done since Jefferson and Adams went head to head, and probably before that.  Glossing this shit over with a sense of universal purpose (triangulation!) doesn't make any of this so complex that only the gifted can understand it, and it certainly doesn't mean that disagreement makes one a lesser human.  It's a helluva lot more simple than that.  Obama was smart enough to keep his rhetorical options open.  Most successful politicians are.  That's why the 'Left Flank' actually hurts any progress.  They make the same mistake that GW made.  You are with us or against us.  That's not principle; that's ego.  And most to the point it's demanding that others give up any sense of the passage of time and the actions undertaken therein.  It's demanding that others give up the right to choose.

My belief is that both Nashville Fan and clammyc are correct.  We should hail the efforts of the Left Flank, and we should understand where they screwed the pooch royally, because they demanded 'join us now, or be the enemy'.  That's self-directed bullshit.

I'll leave you with this:  Democrats and Republicans are objectively the same.  Except they aren't because it's possible to work for progress within the Democratic party.  Over time, we can work to include our ideals, or form something new if we are committed to the idea that nothing new forms in what is *at this time*.   But the real point is this.  You have to work to do something, and tearing down those that can work with you from delusions of your own moral splendor will not avail you in the least.  Change is inevitable.  To struggle is an option.

Comments

[Steve T.]

I would only say this - Republicans are split into camps because they legitimately disagree over some important issues - like, for instance, the role of religion in politics.

For Democrats, the splits are not so clear-cut. Every Democrat I know of would have been perfectly happy with a Public Option - Christ, most would have been happy with Single Payer. But there is a large portion of the Democratic party that resigns itself to the reality of politics as it stands today. That reality is not that the Democrats don't have popular support to engage in some real, fundamental change - the reality is that moneyed interests won't let them.

I understand that a whole lot of Democrats are willing to accept that.

I am not.

I don't know how to fix it. But this shit is not OK.