This is a comment on icebergslim's diary. It was big enough, and I think it's important enough to have a higher profile publishing. Let's face facts folks: if we support this, if we don't get fickle, get picky, then we can support something else stronger when it gets moving, when it gets through.
But if we let our expectations get ahead of our actually ability to execute policy, then we will just serve to bolster the cause of those for whom inaction is good enough.
We have an entire party that thinks that way, and too many among the Democrats who think that way as well. The only way we can defeat those people is to keep the tempo of policy pushes up. And the only way we do that is if we keep morale up. Now I understand why some folks object to that.
But can I be blunt with you? This bullshit with our government has been going on for thirty fucking years, and more on some subjects. They have saturated the culture with this bullshit.
And what are some people leading with? A gospel of discouragement and cynicism. Did we really think that Obama could start things out and just breeze on through?
We can't pull this instant gratification, please me now or I go home bullshit, because the other side is quite happy to live with the government doing nothing, and when the politicians in Washington look to see what support Obama's policies have, and we've succeeded in alienating people about them? The inertia of thirty fucking years of precedent will win. That fucking simple.
We're not not fighting Obama himself here. We're fighting the utter corruption of much of our government, on a scale that beggars the human mind's ability to manage. We will be dealing with the messes of that asshole Bush and the Republicans for decades to come, and we'd better steel ourselves for that, because all that is going to be sliding down like a pallet out of one of those cargo planes, and it's not going to have a fucking parachute. So we better wrestle this motherfucker back where it's supposed to be or we are fucked.
And no, don't tell me we're already fucked, because let me tell you something: if you care at all how this country turns out, there is no choice but to fight, and fight back. Unless we want the consequences to be even worse, we will be well advised to take imperfect opportunities, and improve on them, rather than getting picky about them at a time where our options are pretty fucking limited.
Obama is not the savior. He is not Jesus Christ. He cannot damn his enemies to hell, he cannot change this country without us. He has to make compromises. We can make the compromises easier by being such an everpresent political force, by being so pervasive, that they have no choice but to pay attention. This country needs a new generation of leaders, of people willing to be the eloquent voices that lead this country out of it's dazed, confused stupor of anxiety towards a new sense of mission.
And if we're so damn weak that just a couple years worth of disappointments lead us to abandon the person we put in charge, we're not going to be that generation. It's going to be our kids, who have to contend with how much more fucked up things got, just because we didn't get our policies the way we wanted them quick enough in the face of the inertia of an entire generation's worth of mismanagement of this country.
Rec List? Well I'm honored, and I'm encouraged. Stick with it folks. Let's not make any one person, even President Obama, the indispensable force in change. If you are disappointed in him, so be it, but don't stop pushing him or others towards making good on the promise of something different. Never let up. Evolution is a matter of time and selective pressures. If we let up, we will not be force that the politicians in Washington adapt to.