Posted on 06/21/2011 4:11:30 AM PDT by IbJensen
What is wrong with the Democratic Party?
I used to be a Democrat — for decades. Was it always this bad? Was I that blind?
Well, maybe. But the situation now is drastic. The United States of America has never been in worse shape — foreign or domestic — not since the Civil War anyway. We are en route to being a pathetic, powerless, overblown Greece, but unlike Greece there is no one who can bail us out. We’re too big. We’ll bring everyone else down with us — those left anyway — in an economic Samson Option.
Yet to the Democrats — and their bizarrely compliant media — it’s business as usual. According to such solons of big journalism as CNN’s John King, the Dems main aim is and should be retaking the Congress with the same methods they have used for years – blocking spending cuts, accusing Republicans of excessive greed, and catering to unions and reactionary race-based interests groups.
Hello, Planet Earth. I understand power politics up to a point. In some ways it may even be useful. But this is ridiculous.
Why can’t these people wake up? Don’t they have children, grandchildren? Don’t they realize we are going broke? The evidence is everywhere — from Michigan to Madrid. Keynesian economics — the welfare state itself — has become completely inoperative, morphed into a Ponzi scheme by an aging population.
You can pretend that’s not true. You can put your fingers in your ears and wait for it all to go away. You can recite the mantra about taxing the rich until you drop, blame Bush until he’s a figment of our memory more distant than William Henry Harrison, or pledge your allegiance to Gaia while circling the globe in a solar-powered Lear jet. But the reality remains.
(By the way, if you taxed the rich at a hundred percent, it would only push back our bankruptcy from entitlement programs a year, possibly two.)
So what exactly is wrong with the Democratic Party and its constituents? I know change is difficult, that breaking with old ideas — as the Maoists would say — can be painful, and that few of us like to admit we were wrong, but do we have to wait for bread lines?
So what’s the explanation? Why is it that, in these times, there is nothing less liberal than a “liberal,” less progressive than a “progressive”? Why do they and their party adhere to an ideology so shopworn and stultified — forget about tie-dyes and bell bottoms — they should all be running around in jodhpurs and crinolines?
What explains this political party of lemmings?
I don’t buy the Cloward-Piven argument. Sure, there are some who would like to bring this country down economically so they can rebuild it as some sclerotic socialist utopia replete with Young Pioneer camps and pompous people’s art in the subways (and no food in the stores), but most are not even imaginative enough for that.
I think there are three things at work — habit, fear of change, and pure, unbridled, screw-the-rest-of-us, self-interest. And the ones who focus on the latter — the powerful and self-interested – rely on the habit and the fear of change on the part of the others — plus a soupçon of patronage — to hold the whole tawdry ball of wax together.
Of course this patronage system is deteriorating rapidly. It cannot continue in its present manner without bringing on that economic Samson Option.
So the Democrats are at a crossroads. Will they face reality?
I sincerely doubt it. Not with ultra-conventional Obama in the White House. This is not a man who takes risks. This is not a man who has demonstrated the slightest interest in genuine change other than the rhetorical kind. And big change — giant change — we need.
Michele Bachmann was entirely correct when she excoriated him for failing blacks and Hispanics. But that’s the tip of the proverbial ice berg. His party has failed, more importantly exploited, those minorities for years, decades really. The proof is in their execrable results.
Now they are going after the rest of us. And the sad thing is they may succeed. Because it’s going to take all of America to pull us back again, to get us back to work and revive our spirit. And the Democratic Party is doing the opposite.
It is cool to be a commie. Even Bill Gates and Warren Buffet who you would think might celebrate the virtues of the system that showered them with untold wealth are a bunch of aging hippy liberals specializing in hand outs rather than teaching the next generation how to create jobs.
This new breed of lefty is extremely deadly to us and the only way out is to defeat them at the polls and rip out their health care plan by the roots.
If the right doesn't win, the final countdown begins! This means that marshmellow 'centrists' like Romney, Huntsman, et al, must be consigned to the dustbin of history.
Will they face reality?
I sincerely doubt it.
That makes two of us.
Woops, can’t add. Must be three.
Until everything is deemed ‘fair’ - yes.
Simon misses the obvious explanation - liberalism (like its cousin, environmentalism) is a religion, usually the religious outlet for folks who have no traditional religion.
The major difference is that in conventional religions, people put faith in things that cannot be proven wrong. Liberals put their faith in things that can be proven wrong - they just refuse to admit their policies don’t work, or they come up with elaborate rationalizations for why their stupid approaches never work and are usually counterproductive.
Only a religious zealot could invest unlimited trust in an incompetent fool like our current president - our liberals not only have faith in him, they absolutely adore him.
Unfortunately, a huge part of the populace simply doesn`t understand or care about accelerating collapse. My opinion is the 50-state entity we know as America is nearing its end. The cancer of progressivism has been allowed to advance too far.
This doesn`t mean a smaller, reconstituted version of America won`t arise from the ashes...but I believe the current version of the United States has seen its best days.
But, damn... we`ve had a great run!
“Don’t they realize we are going broke? … Why do they and their party adhere to an ideology so shopworn and stultified — forget about tie-dyes and bell bottoms — they should all be running around in jodhpurs and crinolines? “
What “Progressives” lack is altruism. Altruism, which I think flows mightily in the Tea Party people I’ve met, says, I’ll accept less money, or no money, in Social Security for me when I get there. I’ll take a Wal-Mart greeter job in my declining years so that my children and grandchildren don’t suffer crushing debt.
The Progressive says, “I want my BMW and my Cancun vacations now. I want Social Security to keep me in that lifestyle until I die and I want free medical care until then. To Hell with the future. Let them pay for it.”
Bingo! Right there, in a nutshell, is what motivates all Democrat and most professional Republican politicians. They care not one whit about the future because their outlooks is utterly solipsistic. Their only concern is their own power, privilege, perks and comfort. Nothing else is real, nothing else matters.
Because of that, anything they do or say that improves their personal position is "good" in their view, regardless of the damage it does to anyone else. It is why they so gleefully demagogue any issue they can, if they can benefit from it personally.
Democrats are good at pretending. Democrats once pretended that black people weren't people. The Germans pretended that Jewish people weren't people. Democrats currently pretend that preborn people aren't people and that hosexuality is normal. Pretending can be dangerous!
The Democrats are highly to blame, but let’s not forget the Republicans.
Repoublicans were given an opportunity they are squandering, byt sitting on their hands and doing nothing.
Have they stopped Obamacare? Have they made major cuts in the budget? Have they challenged the ethics of Maxine Waters? Have they stopped illegal immigration? Have they stopped Obama from running wild giving away money to the Arab Spring? Have they passed a Budget?
Can Republicans even decide on a Conservative candidate for President?
And, there was no way a Marxist radical like Obama could have been nominated to higher office, let alone elected.
Liberals put their faith in things that can be proven wrong - they just refuse to admit their policies don’t work, or they come up with elaborate rationalizations for why their stupid approaches never work and are usually counterproductive.
But what is truth? Is it unchanging law?
We shall have truth, is it the same as yours?
--from Jesus Christ, Superstar
“The Democrats are highly to blame, but let’s not forget the Republicans.”
Call me cynical, but the Republicans can’t even unscrew this “lightbulb fiasco”.
The best defense is 1) knowing they're trying and 2) knowing how the will do.
Three great reference reads to learn 'how' it's being done are; 1) The Secret Knowledge: On Dismantling of American Culture; 2) Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America; and 3) Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon.
Reckless Endangerment is more recent history and a very detailed record of how (and who, by name) got us into the mess we're in now.
If you're a reader, I strongly suggest the above. I've finished them all and have passed them on to others who care about what's happening to us by the deliberate left.
You have it. The only cure for liberal disasters is more liberalism. To a Liberal.
The Republicrats could f-ck up a steel ball with a soft rubber mallet.
You are correct. That is why in 1972 with public dissatisfaction with Vietnam at its peak, Richard Nixon easily trounced the anti-war, far left George McGovern. Many Dems at that time knew leftism when they saw it, and voted in droves for Nixon. Things are different today.
Democrats - Thieves, Thugs, Thralls and Thickheads.
Nice alliteration but you need a theme song:
“Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves”
(we’d hear it from the people of the town)
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