Saturday, November 20, 2004

The AWOL Opposition

Assuming evidence of election fraud does not overturn the results, could the United States please get for itself an Opposition Party? Because the Democrats ain't it.

I know it would rattle the beautiful minds of the lunatic middle to see legislators stand in meaningful opposition, rather than stand shoulder-to-shoulder, Lieberman-like, with "their president." I know it's unlikely, given the rise to gutless and compromised leadership by the likes of Tom Vilsack and Harry Reid. But damn, is it ever needed. Because along with "liberal" and "Massachusetts," here's another word Democrats have failed to redeem: "partisan."

Thanks to the electronic drumbeat of the GOP meme machine, "partisanship" has come to mean "playing politics," when actually the opposite is true. A partisan stands for something. A partisan fights. A partisan has a cause. Those playing politics are found in the mewling, puking DLC faction, who furrow their brows to find a "third way" of compromise; to make accomodation; to "moderate" the Bush agenda to make it easier to swallow. (Tom Daschle just gave his farewell speech to the Congress, pleading for "common ground," and only two Republicans cared to be present. That's how much they respect Democratic leaders and their self-abasing compromises.)

To work with Bush now, rather than against him, is to be a camp volunteer, reassuring doomed souls and keeping the queue moving as they walk to the showers. I know that sounds extreme, but the world is in extremis, and the world we knew and still hope for may not survive four more years.

Much of the Democratic leadership either still cannot acknowledge the radical villainy of the Bush gang, or they are fifth columnists who have done an admirable job demoralizing their own base, and destroying the prospects of any meaningful alternative to the GOP.

Where is the opposition party?

James DiEugenio, in the Afterword to Probe Magazine's essential anthology, The Assassinations, helps us understand what became of the Democrats:

Imagine, if you can, that if in the mid-1980s, at the height of the GOP Revolution, Ronald Reagan, Pat Robertson, Newt Gingrich, and George Bush Sr, had all been assassinated in the space of five years. Would the Republicans and the media not suspect something more than coincidence or happenstance? Would their party and their causes be able to sustain the loss? Would Dan Quayle and Bob Dole have been able to pick up the baton? Would history not have been quite different? Certainly, the Democrats were not able to sustain the loss. Nothing comparable filled the gap, nothing even came close. So the consellation fell from the sky and without any pressure from the left, our public debate shited slowly, inexorably to the right.

Today's Democratic Party is what comes of the right's culling it of leaders who threatened to make a different America. The process continues (see Paul Wellstone) and it doesn't always end in death. Sometimes, character assassination is the preferred means (see Howard Dean).

Nothing less than a crime spree has been waged against the party for 40 years, and still the victim insists on reaching out to its assassin.

Pathetic, bizarre and tragic. And to be expected.

9 Comments:

Blogger spooked said...

Yes, good post Jeff and good comment bin'dare.

I'm not sure what is going to stop the US military industrial establishment short of nuclear war.

What is true is that Justin Raimondo is absolutely right-- there is only one party: the War Party.

And I am increasingly beoming a former Democrat.

1:04 p.m.  
Blogger Nobius said...

Opposition party? In America. Are you crazy :)

...the Democrats and the Republicans are the same party. Big government, do nothings that service their special interests only. Have been for at least 50 years.

5:03 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The following was just emailed to Andrew Sullivan, one of the 5 panelists trying to make a decision on who will grace the cover of "TIME" as "Person of the Year".

It should be Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector.
In light of a year where both The New York Times and Washington Post have given mea culpas over their reporting on the Iraq war, where the media in general is self absorbed with guilt and cowardice and stressed out - soul searching after they had accepted without question what they were being fed from administration officials who doctored up CIA intelligence (when they weren't using suspicious intelligence from Chalabi and his rogues) - Scott Ritter is the reminder of defiance we need to focus on and give a damned bit of respect to now.
They (the media) supported a phony war and they know it. The Democrats supported a phony war and they know it. The American people supported a phony war, and yes, on some level, they all know it too.
Scott Ritter has turned out to be the prime example of how more Americans in the public arena should have behaved in the run up to the war, and how they should behave in the future. We should take from his example in moving forward.
At a time when it was unfashionable to criticize a proposed war with Iraq, Scott Ritter was the only significant public figure to do so - before Howard Dean, before Michael Moore - before anyone. And for that, his character came under attack in the press, and disgraceful rumors were spread about him. He was called a traitor and all the rest, but he was unflinching in his opposition leading up to the war, and telling all the last thing they wanted to hear - that an American victory would not happen. Indeed, everything that he had predicted then has come more true each day since - from no weapons of mass destruction to no Al Qaeda ties, to mass civilian casualties to the numbers of our own troops killed, to no military victory to general destabilization in the Middle East. All this he wrote and spoke up about in 2002. Even though his argument should have been convincing to the press and given them pause, no one wanted to take him seriously. And he's still around, giving it to us straight. The embarrassed media and administration do their best to supress what he has to say now.
President Kennedy wrote a book called "Profiles in Courage". There's a reason why that book endures today. It's not about men like Karl Rove or George W. Bush or a filmmaker. True leaders put themselves on the line when the line needs it the most. We'd be in much better shape today if we saw that happen more often.

Justin, Houston

2:17 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The closest thing left to an opposition party is, sadly, the CIA, or factions of it. Check out Michael Scheuer's little backhand zinger on Meet the Press today: "If [bin Laden] was on our side, he would be dining at the White House." http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6531547/

2:48 a.m.  
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