Thank you for your rant! It is an understandable one, though I have some questions about your target, which I will presume to describe as ordinary people who are ineffective liberals and/or ethical Americans with short attention spans and no effective action solutions. You are aiming your anger at SOMEONE directly as "you" (including yourself to some extent), and if I haven't captured that "you" accurately, I apologize. I don't think you mean people who are hypocritical or insincere--but rather people who CAN'T FOCUS (for instance, giving equal weight to torture and net neutrality as issues of concern*).
To understand the problem you are addressing--and the "you" whom you are addressing--for instance, WHY the left (which I firmly believe is in the majority--even the vast majority--in this country) SEEMS to get "scattered" over many, many issues--we need to focus on this apt phrase of yours: "deliberately inconsequential."
I don't think that ANYONE, by their own choice, has deliberately made themselves inconsequential. I think that this is something that has been done to us--to the vast majority--and our main flaw or inadequacy, as a people in an alleged democracy, is failing to grasp HOW we have been made inconsequential.
You can't DO anything about it, if you don't understand HOW it has happened--how we, as a people, have been made inconsequential.
I would start with our elections being tabulated with 'TRADE SECRET' programming code, largely controlled by one, private, far rightwing-connected corporation (ES&S/Diebold), with NO auditing in half the states in the country, and miserably inadequate auditing in the other half.
'TRADE SECRET' vote 'counting' is not the first effort to render us "inconsequential," it is the last--the final blow to democracy (which occurred circa 2002 to 2004**). It is still a doable thing to get rid of these election theft machines--and, in my opinion, it's where we need to start, in peeling back the various methods that are being used to destroy our democracy. We know what some of these methods are--for instance, corporate media promotion of fascist views; corporate media "divide and conquer" propaganda; corporate and billionaire campaign money. But none of these and other ills (including other election rigging tactics, such as purges of black voters) can be addressed when a private, far-rightwing-connected corporation is rigging our elections--is determining WHO gets to use government funds and powers. (You wonder how we can keep 'electing' congresses that end up with an 8% approval rating? THIS is how. Most of them were NOT elected!).
The PROGRAM we are suffering from--of corporate rule, of endless war, of fascist news media, of rigged elections--is DESIGNED to do the following to you and me and the people of this country:
--disempower us (above all)
--demoralize and depress us with repeated defeats (especially the most involved citizens)
--divide us, bewilder us, overwhelm us (with MANY issues of grave concern)
--deprive us of vital information
--& disconnect us from the public sphere.
The five Evil D's!
I am convinced that this is an active, deliberate program, and that there is an active group of fascist powermongers behind it. But it doesn't matter if that is true, nor who they are, as to action. What matters is identifying the mechanisms of control and seeking ways to reverse them.
Throwing the election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' (so to speak) seems to me the most concrete thing we can do, as a start. It's just so blatant! Most Americans would agree that votes should be counted in the PUBLIC VENUE. It is a unifying issue. It is THE issue to stimulate civic involvement by most sectors of the population, and get people out of this very depressed and disempowered state as to their civic duties. Its target is highly appropriate and illuminating: corporate rule.
I am NOT saying that our loss of democracy is not our fault, as individuals or as a people. Of course it is our fault in many ways--due to inattention, selfishness, lack of courage, or whatever, and also due to our desperate needs living under a corporate/military junta (f.i., supporting ourselves and our families amidst massive corporate robbery). Yes, we have been remiss. But why pile on? That is my problem with your rant. You are piling on to ALREADY disempowered, demoralized people.
There are certainly other action projects to be done--and some people doing them: media/information projects, organizing projects, community aid projects, food and energy projects, street protest projects, racial justice projects. In fact, I am rather astonished at what our people have been able to do, in very difficult times. But my view is that the success of any of these projects to a great degree hinges upon our ability to elect true representatives of the people, and the most blatant obstacle to that goal is the corporate-riggable vote counting system. Reverse THAT and you are THEN able to start reversing many other ills.
We do need to keep asking who's in charge; we do need to identify evil powermongers (i.e., the Koch Brothers, the Urosevich Brothers (ES&S/Diebold), the Bush Cartel, the CIA or the Behind-the-CIA, etc.); we do need to keep analyzing difficult, murky, tangled issues (for instance, the internal war between Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld vs. the CIA, circa 2003-2005; the Supreme Court installation of Bush Jr. in 2000 (pre-ES&S/Diebold); Bush junta collusion on 9/11; the corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs," and more)--because it does help to follow the pathways of corrupt power and seek out the "bigger picture." It helps to put things in context--to understand the anti-democracy forces, their goals, their internal disputes, what they use power FOR, the methods that serve them, etc.
It was VERY illuminating to ME, for instance, to research our party leadership on e-voting. Oh God, I was so shocked! Truly! Despite my knowledge of Corporate Democrats, I was flabbergasted by their support of 'TRADE SECRET' vote 'counting.' What it did was to solidify my view of the magnitude of our problems as a democracy. If we can't count on our own party leaders on the most basic element of democracy--counting the votes in the PUBLIC VENUE--we can't count on them for ANYTHING. I can only conclude that they, too, are benefiting from (or living in fear of) 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting. Ergo:
As to practical action: Don't count on ANY Democratic Party leader to help un-rig the voting system. It has to be entirely a movement from below, a movement of ordinary citizens, targeting, say, very local officials such as county registrars of voters (who, despite all, still retain the power to convert from the immensely riggable machines back to paper ballots counted by the people).
Research and analysis helps our curious minds and our ravaged souls to deal with the vast corruption of corporate-run government without becoming depressed and demoralized. You begin to understand WHY nothing works as it is supposed to in a democracy; WHY our leaders are deaf. With understanding come glimpses of how this corrupt system actually works, and where it might truly be vulnerable to reform, and thus, ideas for practical, effective action.
It's a mistake to dwell on the conspiracies (and there are many very real ones); but it's also a mistake to blame "the people," who need bolstering up, not blaming.
Our people need FOCUS (for sure), but also information, ideas and strategy, and heartening examples of effective action. (Latin America has a lot of such examples, lately.) I think that vote counting in the PUBLIC VENUE may pull all of our very serious but scattered issues together. But maybe cops killing unarmed young black men will do so. I tend to think, though, that only cosmetic and temporary reforms will result from protests against the latter, and something similar will happen on torture--because the people who are apparently making the decisions are not accountable to us; they are accountable to the powers behind them, including ES&S/Diebold and whoever is behind ES&S/Diebold. They may have their internal wars (for instance, corporate warmonger Feinstein vs. some faction of the CIA), but "we, the people" are a joke to all of them (to those in front, and to those behind them), and they have all the police/military power to crush us when we get too uppity, and all the government/media power to further demoralize us with empty reforms.
HOW DO WE CHANGE THIS VASTLY CORRUPT SYSTEM? That is the question--not who among us ordinary citizens may be to blame for past inaction, inattention, scatteredness (too many serious issues), poor direction of our ire (at the wrong targets), and other failures.
I think you would agree, and you say, that action is needed. How do you get action? Not by blaming ordinary people for their confusion, or for past failures or current opinions. And not by promoting the myth that our Democratic Party leaders are somehow, magically, going to start responding to the will of the people.
The best of our Democratic Party leaders do the LEAST that they can do for "we, the people" without disturbing the corporate/military powers who rule them and us.
And the worst of them, well, they (Feinstein included) enabled torture, unjust war, mindboggling theft, bloated military, militarized police, corrupt "war on drugs," rise of the "prison-industrial complex," and so much more, meanwhile DISABLING our people, and preventing reform, with 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting, largely controlled by ONE, PRIVATE FAR RIGHTWING-CONNECTED CORPORATION!
If you want me to praise Feinstein for her torture report, sorry I cannot. It means nothing and will come to nothing. I find it intriguing (who's she out to get? what's going on behind closed doors?) but not important. I don't know if that's what you want. Your rant is unclear in that respect. You seem to be saying, don't criticize our party leaders for not doing enough (don't "move the goalposts" on them; don't dump on them for failing us "when it comes to alpaca breeding regulations"
, but (if that's what you mean) I think that you are really, really missing the "bigger picture"--that all of them are owned by big money interests; that all of them are subservient to the "military-industrial-prison complex", and that not one of them--NOT ONE!--can prove that he or she was actually elected.
I think Diane Feinstein is a bit player in the larger horror that is our government.*** I think that Obama probably was really elected--and by a bigger margin than we know--on the hopes and dreams of the American people for a just government. But I think he was "groomed" to play that role, was permitted to offer the minimum of sops for the public good (private insurance-run health care--jeez!), and, most important of all, was PERMITTED to be elected. These kind of Democratic Party leaders--virtually all of them--deserve our closest scrutiny, our strongest skepticism, our blistering criticism and our continuing, intelligent analysis as to why they are failing us in so many serious ways. They are clearly part of the problem. They are clearly embedded in a catastrophically corrupt system.
How do we find ourselves another FDR, say, and how do we get him or her elected president, in view of the immense 'TRADE SECRET' riggability of the election system? How can we even get a true reforming county registrar of voters elected? How are we ever going to have truly representative Congress again?
I do NOT encourage quietude, or non-voting, or throwing away votes, or non-participation of any kind. But I do advocate REALISM. Our government is NEVER going to give up torture, is NEVER going to give up overt and sneaky war, is NOT going to stop police murder and brutality, is NEVER going to create a good health care system, is NOT going to stop horrendous pollution of our planet, nor anything else that most people want, until our leaders are made beholden to US, once again. Hardly any of them are now, and the few who are are just tokens to make us think the system is honest. It is not!
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*(It's not really fair to denigrate net neutrality in this way--nor any serious issue of concern--because it isn't torture, the most abominable of issues (perhaps with the exception of war itself and the slaughter of tens of thousands of people, most of them innocent). Perhaps what we need to do is to see that ALL the issues of concern are RELATED, i.e., the same "folks" who brought us torture are trying to bring us a corporate-friendly "tiered" internet; the same people who brought us torture are robbing us of our money, our rights and our democracy itself, and are actively trying to "divide and conquer" us, with this very tactic: too many serious issues on which the will of the people is being flouted.)
**(Accomplished with the "Help America Vote for Bush" act, passed by the Anthrax Congress in 2002, which provided millions of our tax dollars to the states, to spread the plague of election-rigging machines across the land. Our Democratic Party leaders overwhelmingly supported this--probably out of fear (some of them), neo-liberal collusion with corporate power (many) and/or collusion with the boondoggle of war for our "military-industrial-prison-complex" (too many). In short, our Democratic Party leadership was ALREADY gravely compromised by 2002, by means other than election rigging. These included corporate media manipulation of news and opinion, and the FILTHY campaign contribution system--both legacy fascist methods from the Reagan junta--and 9/11 itself, used to instill fear not only in our population but also in any of our leaders who might have helped to stop torture, unjust war and other crimes of the Bush junta. E-vote rigging was not the initiator of our problems; it was/is the final blow to our ability, as a democracy, to identify and solve problems. It was/is the end to any hope of reform.)
***(For instance, Feinstein didn't know who Leon Panetta was--Bush Sr.'s choice for 'Obama's' CIA Director, straight from Bush Sr.'s "Iraq Study Group." She publicly called Panetta "inexperienced," but quickly shut up about that. She obviously didn't know that he is "old CIA."
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