...because then the attempts to destroy a woman's right to choose would have collapsed a long time ago.
I am a progressive, deep in my bones. But I am so tired of reading people saying "if we don't vote, THEN they'll listen to us.''
It has never happened. It never will. Only a movement -- willing to accept step-by-step change, rather than all or nothing -- has any chance of success.
The anti-abortion movement has, unfortunately, been the most patient and relentless group of voters around. Reagan blathered on about ending abortions, but truthfully got very little done. So did the anti-abortion crowd sit it out? Nope -- they doubled down, putting more and more pressure.
Bit by bit, chip by chip, they have managed to limit a woman's right to choose, gathering momentum over the years and tiny victories that have become major transformations as one is piled onto the next.
We don't do that -- or at least, too many of us don't do that. We want change -- not even major victories are enough. Complete, total, everything-we-want victories are demanded. If not, well, then our politicians are just sell outs. I read one commentator on here a while back say that, while he recognized it was impossible, he demanded that Obama accomplish everything. And all I could think is, that sounds like something my kids would say.
There are those who say, well, we won't be persuaded by bullying. But bullying emerges when rationalization fails. A few weeks ago, I posted something about my father and his battle to secure a vote in Hungary, and his deep commitment to the importance of voting, and his belief that Americans don't understand how critical it is to vote. And the response from those who criticized was basically, I won't vote if I don't get what I want -- occasionally spiked with a disparaging remark about my dad. A man who has done more for democracy and human rights than anyone I know or probably will ever know.
Reason doesn't work. For God's sake, I don't want to live with the consequences of a even more conservative Supreme Court. But that's what the non-voting progressives are setting in motion -- and they will almost certainly be the first to bitch when the next ruling from the more rightward-leaning court serves to further restrict women's rights.
And at some point, some person will say -- "well, pressuring us won't get us to vote" or whatever. Like what I say determines whether people will vote or not. I know I'm probably speaking to a wall. Non-voters will proudly not vote, and everyone else will cry at the outcome.
As I have said repeatedly on this site, we cannot be a collection of disparate demands. We need to be a movement. And a movement takes steps forward, inexorably leading to transformation. My father could have stayed home bitching after the Hungarian uprising failed. But he kept at it -- and decades later, cast his first vote.
Im not saying we need to wait decades. I'm saying we need to be a force, a power, a movement. Staying home does nothing but make a few people feel morally superior for having maintained their ideological purity. And it makes me cry in despair.
As that great philosopher, Billy Joel, once wrote of the liberal ideological purist whose heart is broken because of the world's inability to meet intractable demands:
There's a place in the world for the angry young man
With his working class ties and his radical plans
He refuses to bend, he refuses to crawl,
He's always at home with his back to the wall.
And he's proud of his scars and the battles he's lost,
He struggles and bleeds as he hangs on the cross-
And he likes to be known as the angry young man.
Give a moment or two to the angry young man,
With his foot in his mouth and his heart in his hand.
He's been stabbed in the back, he's been misunderstood,
It's a comfort to know his intentions are good.
He sits in a room with a lock on the door,
With his maps and his medals laid out on the floor
And he likes to be known as the angry young man.
And there's always a place for the angry young man,
With his fist in the air and his head in the sand.
And he's never been able to learn from mistakes,
He can't understand why his heart always breaks.
His honor is pure and his courage as well,
He's fair and he's true and he's boring as hell!
And he'll go to the grave as an angry old man.
Hey, don't get mad at me. I didn't write it.