In Quick Hits, HouseofProgress called attention to an article by investigative journalist/historian Robert Parry (who broke the Iran/contra story SIX MONTHS before the rest of the Versailles press noticed it in 1986), "The 'Teach-the-Dems-a-Lesson' Myth". While it's a popular argument that progressives have supported the Democrats for decades, only to see them move farther and farther to the right, Parry points out that this simply isn't true. Rather, progressives have routinely repeatedly revolted--often for seemingly very good reasons--and that those revolts have been a significant part of the pattern of politics that's driven American politics to the right. It's not so much a matter of blaming progressives as it is a matter of pointing out a pattern of behavior that doesn't work. It's not so much a question of re-inventing the wheel as it is of rei-inventing the flat tire.
Here's how it begins:
If my e-mail inbox is any indication, many American progressives plan to use the Nov. 2 election as an opportunity to "teach the Democrats a lesson" by either not voting or casting ballots for third parties, even if this contributes to the expected Republican (and Tea Party) landslide.
The thinking seems to be that the loss of the congressional majorities will punish the Democrats for accepting half-measures and compromises on issues from health care and financial reform to job stimulus and war. The Left's hope apparently is that the chastened Democrats will then shift toward more progressive positions and be more assertive.
However, modern American political history tells us that this strategy never works. After the four key elections in which many progressives abandoned the governing Democrats - in 1968, 1980, 1994 and 2000 - not only did Republicans take U.S. politics further to the right, but the surviving Democrats tacked more to the center and grew more timid.
All four elections also were marred by GOP dirty tricks that drew little or no reaction from either the governing Democrats or the progressives, emboldening the slash-and-burn Republicans to operate in an ever more audacious style.
Tragically, too, the Left's sideline-sitting contributed to the unnecessary deaths of millions of people in wars from Vietnam and Central America to Iraq and Afghanistan. Arguably even worse, U.S. inaction on global warming - a neglect surely to be continued if Republicans and Tea Partiers are victorious in Election 2010 - may doom the future of a livable planet.
Of course, commentators replied to HouseofProgress's Quick Hit by reasserting many of the same sorts of arguments that were advanced during those past past elections. Right off the bat, david mizner accused Parry of "shooting strawmen", claiming that "Whatever happens on election day, the Dems wil continue to disappoint."
But actually, however tempting that argument is, Parry points to evidence that this wasn't always the case in the past. In fact, with the archetypal example--Vietnam--the Democrats were on the verge of withdrawing, handing the progressive anti-war movement precisely what it had been fighting for:
In a diary Friday, Matt asked for help in understanding something significant:
I've become fascinated by the effects of honesty/dishonesty in a culture. I live in DC, and I'm beginning to think that there are characteristics of those in power that are more reflective of a mass psychological disorder or strange cultural affinity for self-deception than 'money in politics', bribery, or corruption can explain.
This got me thinking, and revisiting some ideas I've been kicking around for a while. Here are three of them that I think are closely connected:
Truth and lies have switched places: Lies continually repeated function like the truth, while truths that go unuttered function as if they were lies. A prime example of this in the 2000 election was the conventional wisdom that Gore was a serial liar, while Bush was a man of great integrity-a straight-talker.
Taken to the extreme, things that cannot possibly be so have taken the place of fundamental truths. A prime example of this is the so-called "war on terror"-something that makes absolutely no sense, if you stop and think about it.
Verbal formulations are used that are inherently nonsensical and cannot be used rationally-at least in the existing total environment. "Supporting the troops" is a prime example of this.
I'm going to discuss all three in diaries today, beginning with the first point on the flip.
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