Is this still a democracy?

I'm probably rather naive about the machinations (er, parliamentary tactics, pardon me) that go on every day on Capitol Hill, but this disturbs and frightens me. The way the Republicans have been openly strong-arming dissent and even debate out of existence seems plain antidemocratic, nay, un-American to me.

For months I've had an internal debate with myself about what my personal response should be to the systematic dismantling of just about everything I value. Escaping into a nice novel and my knitting seems like an attractive option, but my conscience would nag me. I remind myself that I'm not nearly as marginalized as members of resistance movements have been at other times in history. But for fuck's sake, Howard Dean's dismissal of true progressives in his speech last week...

"You're not going to see any 18-state strategies. We're going to be in places like Mississippi and Kansas and Idaho. We're going to be in the Republican counties of California from now on; we're not going to try to win by getting San Francisco and Oakland and Berkeley..."

makes me want to rejoin the Green Party. We're the conscience of the Democratic Party, you asshole--we're not the ones who've sold our souls to no good purpose. I think of myself as rather moderate politically, but I'm really fucking tired of being simultaneously denigrated and taken for granted--when it comes to voting and fundraising time. And I'm really, really sick of having to vote for craven, compassionless, money-grubbing cretins or mealy-mouthed apologists because "maybe they're electable."

I don't have a problem with Dean's "white, Christian" comment that raised such a furor, but these days we seem to live in a country where speaking the truth is punishable by media flaying.

Jeez, sorry for the outburst; I guess I shouldn't have gotten started. OK, time for some deep breaths and some more thinking. And perhaps a few e-mails to my representatives and a check to my favorite lefty advocacy group.

Comments

[Birdsong]

Good on you for not taking it! These are scary times... and I have lived awhile, so know there haven't been much worse when it comes to the threat to human rights in the U.S. I found you through CA Knit Bloggers... hitting from another member's site..I am on it too, but not everyone puts up the button, so I have never been the whole loop. Liked the Knitpicks blue, too.. .I am loving their yarns.