Democratic Underground - "We are witnessing the re-definition of what it means to be a 'Democrat.'"

That was said by a DUer, Octafish, in another thread. He is exactly right. We are witnessing it right now. We are being required to accept things that Democrats have never traditionally supported.

It is catching many of us off-guard and throwing us off balance more and more.

We all know that George Bush did not tell us the truth about Iraq. The media was on board with his goal of invasion of a sovereign country. We talked a lot here then about the seeming militant "drumbeat". The day that the news stopped everything but the coverage of our bombing of Iraq...the shock and awe...was a day etched into our minds.

Yet he and his cronies will never be held accountable for the destruction and lives lost by an invasion based on lies. Last year Katha Pollitt of The Nation wrote about how Bush and his cronies are actually leading good lives and prospering.

Those of the "torture creative class" and how they got rewarded.

I should have been a torturer. You too, reader. Well, maybe not an actual physical torturer, because then there'd be a small chance I'd go to prison like Lynndie England or Charles Graner. My picture might be in the paper doing nasty things to naked men with a goony smile and a thumbs-up. I might even have disturbing memories and bad dreams, because surely, unless one is a sociopath, throwing people into walls and hanging them from the ceiling all day is likely to have its troubling moments. What I mean is, I should have been a member of the torture creative class--a conceptual torturer, a facilitator of torture, perhaps an inventor of torture law, an architect of the torture archipelago, a dissimulator, concealer, denier, rationalizer, minimizer and pooh-pooher of torture. As a word person, I could have come up with circumlocutions to confuse the media, bureaucratic phrases like "special methods of questioning" and "enhanced interrogation techniques.

..."Why should I have joined the torture creative class? Because now I would be having a great life.

She then presents the ways that folks like John Yoo, Donald Rumsfeld, Doug Feith, and Paul Wolfowitz have been rewarded with profitable associations.

There is more.

We are having to watch women's rights be marginalized as the administration and many congressional Democrats act to pacify the religious right. There was even an executive order regarding abortion coverage.

Even more.

We are having to watch as people whom we respected as outspoken Democrats are pushed out because the right wing targeted them.

Van Jones and Shirley Sherrod..out quickly because they were targeted by the right wing.

Yet someone as obnoxious as Alan Simpson is being made to feel safe in his job on the fiscal commission, though he is always saying ugly things about Social Security and seniors. That's because it is our side that disapproves. He will stay in spite of his insults.

And also we have to sit and watch as good teachers are humiliated by having their names printed based only on test scores of students. We need to watch as some of them are forced into an assembly during which their names are called out as they are fired. A whole school, and being a good teacher doesn't count.

We have to sit back and watch the WH Chief of Staff actually brag that they are turning schools over to the free markets.

"In a Thursday interview, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel argued that rather than recoiling against Obama, business leaders should be grateful for his support on at least a half-dozen counts: his advocacy of greater international trade and education reform open markets despite union skepticism; his rejection of calls from some quarters to nationalize banks during the financial meltdown; the rescue of the automobile industry; the fact that the overhaul of health care preserved the private delivery system; the fact that billions in the stimulus package benefited business with lucrative new contracts, and that financial regulation reform will take away the uncertainty that existed with a broken, pre-crash regulatory apparatus."

All the while to add to the outrage, the party leaders frequently refer to us as "the left", "leftists", "liberals" in a very disparaging way.

The right wing extremists are not called out like we on the "left" are. We are nothing like them. Their views are against the poor and the needy, we stand up for them. Their rhetoric has a mean streak toward those not like them. Our side usually exhibits tolerance and inclusion.

As Octafish said..we are in the middle of seeing our party redefine what it means to be a Democrat.

And if we question we are scorned and treated badly by the party leaders.

"We are witnessing the re-definition of what it means to be a 'Democrat.'" [View All]