Where Are The Anti-Shutdown Protests?

[ProSense]

Where Are The Anti-Shutdown Protests?

By Zack Beauchamp

It’s no secret that the radical right has seized control of major parts of the U.S. government while the radical left remains furious, but impotent. The shutdown fight is a manifestation of this yawning gap.

It’s not that consistent progressives haven’t had recent success influencing policy. They (we) have. Rather, it’s that the traditional radical left — socialist labor organizers, hippies and Occupiers — haven’t been able to rally their troops. The loss of these folks, the real analogue to the Tea Party, has deprived the broader left of a historically useful tool for fighting the sort of extremism on display on Capitol Hill.

<...>

Anti-austerity protest movements opposing similar attacks on government services have swept Europe since the onset of the Great Recession. But, as Kazin notes, the leftist spirit in America that animated Occupy and the Vietnam War protests appears to be waning just as the influence of fringe conservatives is waxing.

It’s impossible to be sure whether or not a restive leftist movement would change the parameters of the short-term shutdown debate in the way that Kazin suggests it would. But his work provides strong evidence for the deeper idea that leftist movements affect the conditions of political possibility: broad-based political movements help define what sorts of political actions by the major parties are thinkable and which are out-of-bounds. The vibrant radical conservative movement made repeated government by crisis as a mechanism for challenging the American welfare state thinkable. A more robust leftist movement could have helped exert an equal and opposite gravitational pull.

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http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/10/01/2710041/where-are-the-anti-shutdown-protests/

Where are the "Wake the Fuck Up" posts?

It's now Democrats' turn to be pissed
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023759370

[ProSense]

1. Kick! n/t

[Bluenorthwest]

2. Take a look at the reception 'centrist moderates' have gven liberal activists the last few

years. On DU, Occupy is attacked, Dan Choi was attacked, each activist here was called a 'poutrage artist' and told we 'wanted a pony'.
Centrists and Moderates always claimed to be bipartisan pals with Moderate Republicans united against the 'extremes'. So where are they now? Should they not organize with their fellow 'moderates' in the GOP against the 'extremes' as they always say they do when they organize against liberal or gay or peace activists?

[michigandem58]

5. Indeed, it will be moderates that find a way out

and govern, as grown ups do. I suppose if we just had teabaggers and the far left in power everyone could just refuse to find a deal while we fell off the cliff, congratulating themselves for their political purity.

This is divided government and there is no way out without as least some repugnants. Democracy's a bitch, aint it?

[Paladin]

3. Damn good question.

I keep seeing all these articles about how badly the repubs have wounded themselves with this clusterfuck, but they sure seem happy about it to me. I mean, really: the WWII monument in DC is shut down because of the repub's actions, and who shows up to tear down the barriers, hog the cameras, and let the old guys in? Michelle "Crazy Eyes" Bachmann and her repub cohorts. I call bullshit on this. You liberals who are more mobile than I am need to get things cooking, and by-God quick. Don't wait for the White House to ignite things, because that will be a very long wait---too much 16-dimension chess going on, doncha know......

[SidDithers]

4. "furious, but impotent"...

Sid

[Scuba]

6. Just what the right wanted to achieve by crushing the unions - silence the majority.

Mission accomplished.

[BlueCaliDem]

7. Good question. Excellent post. Yeah, where are they?

Instead, I see more "FDR would've done this or that!" or even, "What would Nixon do?"