Jim HIghtower: We're Mad as Hell and the Dems Aren't Listening

[marmar]

from the Hightower Lowdown, via AlterNet:



We're Mad as Hell and the Dems Aren't Listening

By Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown. Posted January 14, 2008.

The Democrats' fizzle in the face of the power-grabbing Bush administration is doing serious damage to America's political psyche.




What I am hearing from across the country is a surge of angst and discouragement. In conversations, calls, emails, and letters, people in general (and progressives in particular) are expressing profound dismay at the deterioration of America's democracy, not only because of the BushCheney regime, but also, and especially, because of the fecklessness of the Democratic Congress.

"For crying out loud! Why do we even bother to have elections?" Mark wailed in an email.

I am afraid of what this country has become and that at any minute the people in charge may bomb Iran, and I have lost all hope that there will be any checks and balances," Marshaleigh wrote, adding bluntly, "Congress doesn't work."

Jay bemoaned the dismal performance of Congress in this letter to the editor: "Despite the 2006 congressional elections and the overwhelming antiwar sentiment among our citizens... have become enablers of the White House's misbegotten Iraq venture."

Susan wrote, "What little optimism I had is vanishing. I am much more overwhelmed by the Democratic party's lack of gumption than I was by Bush's wickedness. And the small ideas offered by the presidential candidates make me cringe. I need help."

The damage now being done to America's political psyche by the Democrats' fizzle is way out of the ordinary. These writers are smart, engaged, committed people who are not easily surprised or discouraged by negative political developments. They constitute the grassroots base of progressive activism in our country, and it is truly worrisome that even they are becoming dispirited -- especially as we head into a watershed election year.

The capitulation Congress

It is not some vague funk that's afflicting the public, not some general ennui caused by seven years of Bushdom. Rather, it's a growing despair -- and a rising national embarrassment -- brought on by an ongoing series of specific, disheartening collapses by Democrats, who are turning out to be weaker than Canadian hot sauce. For example:

* The Iraq war rages on, and public anger over this is boiling not merely because the people's own clear opposition to the war is being dishonored, but also because congressional efforts to stop Bush are so halting and halfhearted. True, the Democrats' majority is so slim that they can't overcome a presidential veto of a withdrawal timetable, but this is only one approach. We The People want to see some real spunk, an all-out push that is equal to the seriousness of the disastrous damage being done by this war. There should be a barrage of investigative hearings, a proliferation of exposes on war profiteering, a surge of subpoenas, a hailstorm of contempt citations, a thousand specific cuts (none harming the troops) in Bush's war budget, an unleashing of Congress's "inherent contempt" power--in other words, a strategic, unrelenting antiwar offensive using all of the unique powers of the legislative branch to march right in the face of BushCheney executive arrogance, reframe the debate, and rally the people.

.......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/story/72875/

[ananda]

1. Boy this article speaks to me and..

.. about me!

[TerwilligeRedux]

20. kick

[mod mom]

2. I would love for someone to choose Hightower as a VP candidate. Common sense & straight

talk would help the running mate.

[cosmicdot]

21. I'll submit my K and R here

the subject is the message

[mod mom]

24. I'm not kidding. I think having an honest down home talking candidate would

draw a lot of new voters, but alas... those pesky DLC types would want no part of it. Heck, populist-speaking, Edwards is left out can you imagine how they would receive Hightower?

[The Stranger]

3. What's weird is, given the primary campaign, Democrats seem willing to attack each other viciously,

yet when it comes to their corporate, Neocon, Dominionist Masters in the GOP, they meekly assent to the very unraveling of our fucking Constitutional system.

What is going on here?

[me b zola]

10. Maybe they were 'keeping their powder dry" for the primaries

:shrug:

[tom_paine]

15. The only thing that is certain is that SOMETHING is going on here.

Yes, the Democrats, almost to a person (with a couple dozen exceptions, as Higtower noted) are terribly frightened of directly attacking Bushler.

Terribly frightened.

It can be no coincidence that the Democratic Leadership is behaving EXACTLY as the twisted minds of Nixon, Liddy, et al, imagined their "perfect" Democrtic Party, neutered and neutralized, to behave all those years ago during the Watergate meetings.

No coincidence.

But it doesn't even matter WHY anymore, just that it is. America, Russia, and China are all essentially now governed by the same form of government, the only differerce being how "nicely" the Subjects of the respective tyrannies are treated differently, due to the varying traditions of freedom that have to be paid lip-service.

So, as long we we Imperial Subjects of Amerika don't test the bars of our prison, we are left alone to pretend we are still free, and still have a vote.

[loudsue]

35. I agree: we're going to need to start rioting in the streets if we're ever

going to "test the bars of our prison". This bunch of corporate whores are not going to go easily into that good night.

[psychmommy]

23. here ! here!

i wholeheartedly agree.

[bonito]

4. K&R!

[NewJeffCT]

5. Wasn't it liberal ex-Republican Lowell Weicker that said something like

"Democrats have no guts."

He was always asked why he didn't become a Democrat because he was liberal and agreed with them on most of the important issues, and Weicker's response was something like, "Democrats have no guts."

[ixion]

6. Jim nails it

I want to see real change, not (meek) lip service. I want my civil liberties back, the Constitution and Bill of Rights restored, along with the Rule of Law. I'm sick to death of living in a police state, and mad as hell that the so-called opposition party is doing nothing but capitulating.

[TerwilligeRedux]

7. kick & recommend

I'll stop kicking when they pry the keyboard away from my cold, snot-moistened fingers!

[Asgaya Dihi]

8. I've been an activist for years now...

but I've been so angry the last couple of months that I can't function in that role one day in ten anymore. Most of the time I'm too upset to feel I can deal with the public without doing more harm than good, they don't understand the anger. I kept it together through the prison growth and prison racial imbalances of the 90's, the war on drugs with the ever increasing number of mandatory sentences and Constitutional exceptions, just hoping we'd get a sane President and the party would wake up eventually. I just don't have decades more in me and I'm tired of having to fight both parties. Even after disenfranchisement cost the party Florida in 2000 so they can't deny the cost anymore they still fix nothing when the rock/powder disparity was put in front of them by the courts. They are more afraid of what someone might say than they are sorry for the impact of what they've done, right and wrong take a back seat to political fears.

It was one thing when the public just needed to be educated, when we just had to get a point of view across or whatever, but this is different. On many of the bigger issues the public is getting with the program and more receptive to the arguments but our leaders still don't give a damned. We could fight the corporations, the right wingers, the ignorance, but having to take on our own party as well is just too much. As long as the corps are happy they really don't seem to care.

This nation is doomed the way it's going and we'll take half the world down with us given the chance. We don't care about anyone but ourselves and can't quite understand that this is exactly why others can get away with not giving a damn about us either. Unless we learn, and fast, that our rights are only as safe as we make those of others we're done as a nation. Our leaders have to stand for something and check the damned results for a change, and FIX what they find.

[Bandit]

9. While the Democrats laugh and scoff and say who ya gunna vote for , a Republican?

They have us by the short hairs and they know it and exploit it....It has nothing to do with Presidential politics and everything to do with Congress....

[TahitiNut]

12. I hear that most often from the "Blue Dog" wing (i.e. DLCers and GOP-lite) ...

... and regard it as a DESIRE in a thin disguise. :shrug:

[bvar22]

22. Word!

The Democratic Party is a BIG TENT, but there is NO ROOM for those
who advance the agenda of THE RICH (Corporate Owners) at the EXPENSE of LABOR and the POOR.

[slipslidingaway]

11. K&R thanks. n/t

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

13. It's NOT because "Congress doesn't work."

It's because Congress REFUSES TO work.

They've been paid off, pure and simple. :shrug:

[JMDEM]

14. Who is number 1?

You are number 6.

[tom_paine]

17. We are ALL Number Six. You, too.

No laughing matter.

Like your sigline.

[RuleOfNah]

25. They are listening. Dems knows the numbers.

They are not calling. Yet.

Who owns the Judicial? Who owns the media? Who owns the mercenaries? Who owns the money? Who owns the villain role in history?

Representatives are not front line types, they do not seize the moment. They wait for someone else to do it, and survive.

2 was an inside job.

[Richard Steele]

16. K&R

[bbgrunt]

18. k and r kand r k and r

[MadHound]

19. Once again Hightower is right on the money

More and more people are feeling left out of the political process as increasingly both parties are corrupted by corporate money.

[mhatrw]

26. Hightower for President! n/t

[Kat45]

27. Are the DC Dems so enamored with their money, power & lifestyle, and/or

terrified of losing it? Or do the real powers that be/the neocons have something on each one of them (like J. Edgar Hoover did back in his time.)?

[Breeze54]

28. Kicking this hard!!

And Recommending... :kick:

[BeHereNow]

29. And you know I'm right behind you...K&R

:hug:
BHN

[SeattleGirl]

30. Wow! Hightower really nailed it!

That's exactly how I feel!

[krkaufman]

31. I feel for Hightower and the rest of my fellow citizens...

... but also feel that they need to be reminded that *we* are the ones who have given so much power to the corporations, from the 1980 election on. One election is not going to turn nearly 30 years of pro-corporate governance around.

[Le Taz Hot]

32. K & R

for the wonderful Mr. Hightower. He continues to "get it."

[paparush]

33. Kick & Rec /nt

[lonestarnot]

34. I would fly to this rally.

"There should be a barrage of investigative hearings, a proliferation of exposes on war profiteering, a surge of subpoenas, a hailstorm of contempt citations, a thousand specific cuts (none harming the troops) in Bush's war budget, an unleashing of Congress's "inherent contempt" power--in other words, a strategic, unrelenting antiwar offensive using all of the unique powers of the legislative branch to march right in the face of BushCheney executive arrogance, reframe the debate, and rally the people."