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TygrBright

(20,733 posts)
Sun Dec 18, 2016, 08:28 PM Dec 2016

I fear Democrats are being nose-led into all the wrong priorities

It's very simple.

The train wreck is in progress. It's a very long train. The wreck is happening in very slow motion. Nevertheless, it is a train wreck, and it's already happening.

We have three choices about how we can spend the scarce and valuable resources of time and effort available to us.

Attempting to stop a train wreck in progress is futile.

Attempting to figure out how it happened and who is to blame isn't futile- and that information will be needed, as many point out, to help prevent it from happening again. Nevertheless, investigating the wreck WHILE IT IS HAPPENING subjects us to an awful lot of noise and confusion and potentially bad calls about causation versus correlation. Not to mention that there is something much more important we can only be doing now, while the train wreck is happening, and that is:

TRYING TO SALVAGE EVERYTHING WE CAN, and GET THE HELL OFF THE TRAIN.

"Trying to salvage" is always a challenge, because of course everything is important. But the discussions we should be having are about what we can save, who can be most effective doing what, and how we can support each others' efforts to save those things.

How can we use the personnel codes of the Federal Civil Service to enable Federal employees to retain their jobs, protect their rights to do those jobs properly, and support one another against the attempts of Putsch appointees to destroy them?

How can we use local and state legislative and regulatory bodies to protect key elements of human rights and freedom, and resist the Putsch apparatchiks?

How can we use available communications, connections, and creativity to build the network of the Resistance, and work against the Putsch at every turn?

"Getting the hell off the train" is related to that last-- what can we take out from under Federal control, off the grid, out of sight. What can we hide or protect from the Putsch shock troops, and how?

Those are the priorities I will be focusing on.

Down the road, time and perspective will reveal a lot more about the chain of causation, the "how the fuck did this happen and how do we keep it from happening again?" We'll be able to use that information, with the cooler perspective of distance and the confidence of analytical testing, to rebuild the railway and ensure this type of train wreck never happens again.

For now, I will be looking to salvage what I can. And to get the people and things I value off the goddamn train before the cars we're in are pulled off to plunge down the abyss in flames.

determinedly,
Bright

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kentuck

(110,950 posts)
3. During this train wreck, we should also remember...
Sun Dec 18, 2016, 09:25 PM
Dec 2016

that we are still the majority in this country if we count the votes in the last election. Hillary Clinton had 2.86 million more votes than Donald Trump. Just remember: we are the majority.

TygrBright

(20,733 posts)
4. Absolutely. That should be, must be, our greatest source of hope.
Sun Dec 18, 2016, 09:27 PM
Dec 2016

It's what remains to us, our most powerful tool.

If we use it well, we can survive this train wreck, and rebuild based on the vision of freedom and equity for all, living sustainably on this beautiful planet, in harmony with life.

hopefully,
Bright

TygrBright

(20,733 posts)
7. Lotta definitions to agree on in that statement.
Sun Dec 18, 2016, 10:23 PM
Dec 2016

Problem with being a "grassroots" party is that in a lot of peoples' minds, "grass" only puts down "roots" in some mythical small-town and rural Mayberry fantasy.

Problem with being a "working/middle class" party is that those who are already locked out of even this increasingly oppressive cheap-labor economy are automatically excluded.

Problem with being a "populist" party is that a whole lot of creative, intelligent, progressive people who equate "populist" with the Nuclear Cheeto and his demagoguery aren't going to play that game.

Problem with "again" is that the Democratic Party almost never WAS all of those things at once- it has always been a struggle for the soul of the Party against those who would limit it to "people like US." Even when "people like US" meant white male Union leadership, in coalition with some progressive anti-war and Civil Rights advocates, it rarely pulled off much of a real 'big tent' appeal.

The reason the "solid South" was solid for so many decades was based in the history of Lincoln's Republican Party, the Reconstruction, and Jim Crow.

Problem with "everywhere" is that all of those words have different meanings, depending on where you are.

The Democratic Party has always been a better *idea* than reality.

Now the train wreck is happening, can we focus on saving as much as we can, and then work on the whole 'definitions' thing, including ALL of the people helping us with the salvage work? The poor, the unemployed, the urban, the intellectual, the rural, the female, the brown, the atheist, the LGBT, and ALL who will be suffering under the Putsch?

suggestively,
Bright

msongs

(67,193 posts)
6. start taking back local, city, county elected positions with a dem in EVERY contest even if
Sun Dec 18, 2016, 10:16 PM
Dec 2016

the only vote he/she gets is for him/herself

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