Since no one reads my blog, really, I doubt this will have any impact. As 2009 comes to the curtain call, I thought I would put my not-quite-one-penny's worth of advice for liberals out there.
Stop your damn whining.
I have been reading several long-time liberal bloggers - digby, Glenn Greenwald, Dean Baker - and it is amazing to me how little their mindset has changed since I first started blogging in the summer of 2006. Two straight liberal Democratic Congressional victories, an overwhelming liberal Democratic Presidential victory, and their entire world still centers on how much power the Republicans have, how much of a threat the right wing continues to pose, not just on a day to day basis as obstructionists to the Democratic agenda, but over time as very real danger to the Democratic majorities in Congress. There is the ubiquitous complaint about the media its mindlessness. There is the on-going idea that the religious right will somehow emerge from its flapping and flailing, still leaderless and agenda-less, as a power to be reckoned with.
Power is, for the most, an illusion. While there are very real accouterments that accompany very real power - money and guns, for the most part - they have little to do with the power the Republicans continue to wield over far too many liberals. I fear that even liberals and Democratic bloggers refuse to leave behind the mindset of defeatism, of a minority beset on all sides by forces ready and eager to thwart their search for a better society by evil enemies and purblind, fair-weather fake-friends.
It is one thing to bring forward specific criticisms of the President, of the Congressional Democrats, of their various strengths and weaknesses and mistakes and occasional correct actions. It is quite another to continue to act as if liberals were not, in fact, in power. Just because a few insiders in Washington continue to pretend that Republicans still run the show; just because the Washington Post only quotes insane Republicans like Peter King and Pete Hoekstra when, for example, some nincompoop tries to set his underwear on fire on a plane in no way means that either King or Hoekstra are movers and shakers. Just because Meet The Press continues to showcase the risibly nonsensical Newt Gingrich in no way means he has any power or authority.
As of right now, the Republicans still have some kind of odd power over far too many, not so much in reality as in the minds of liberal bloggers who believe, despite all sorts of evidence, that the right is poised to take over the Universe, having spoiled any chance liberals might have had of making the world a little better.
Please, for God's sake - stop it. Stop acting like losers. Stop talking like losers. Stop making the impossibly perfect the enemy of the very real not too shabby. Stop making inferred accusations that the Obama Administration is, in reality, no different from the Bush Administration, or even the Clinton Administration.
Just, for God's sake, for just one brief moment, act like winners, not whiners.
Make a resolution for 2010 that you will no longer allow the big scary Newt to have any power through the really stupid things he says on Twitter. Stop worrying that John Boehner is, through some kind of Rovian alchemy, going to emerge as the Speaker of the House in January, 2011, because it isn't going to happen. Finally, look at the actual evidence of the past year and consider how far we have come compared to any time in the previous eight years. So what if Obama's election didn't usher in a new millennium of good will to all? We are, for all there have been all kinds of frustrations (including with the President and members of the Congressional Democratic caucus), far better off than at any time since the Big Dog left office in January, 2001.
Most of all, get over yourselves. Move on. The times have changed, yet you all write as if it were still 2004 or 2005. The best way to keep another from having power over you is to refuse to grant them that power. Point and laugh at the occasional brashness and boldness of someone acting as if they have power, to be sure. Continuing to cower in the corners, or complain of Republican hypocrisy, or whine because Newt Gingrich gets more TV face time than some liberals grants these folks far too much power.
It also betrays a mindset, implying that all these folks really want is their own space on the Sunday morning blabfests, rather than fostering their own, alternative sources of public discourse.
I close with the words with which I opened. I know few will read this, and those who do will find all sorts of reasons to disagree with pretty much everything I have written. So what? Finding someone like digby and Glenn Greenwald back in the summer of 2006 was really quite wonderful; reading them today, however, when they seem to do no more than recycle the same points they made then makes me wonder if they understand how big a victory liberals have won. What they haven't done is capitalize on that victory. I guess it really is more fun to be a persecuted minority. . .
Virtual Tin Cup
