One Day at a Time

It had really gotten to the point that I had a hard time wading through the hour-by-hour insanity out of doughface donny's White House. At some point I threw my hands up in dismay and turned to other avenues of a less stressful variety. I kept posting stuff on the facebook page and occasionally on twitter but this is the first time in two months that I've sat down to write an actual blog entry. It isn't likely to get any easier in the days ahead so I figured now is as good as any a time to get back into it. Two things gave me a bit of a kick, first was hearing Driftglass talk about the United States as an "occupied country" on their podcast yesterday, second was reading the basically insufferable Andrew O'Hehir's follow-up to his epic troll last week of his (and Salon's) audience.

Now, I don't interact with Driftglass often and I'm sure he wouldn't even know who I am much less have gotten the idea of America being an occupied country from my skribblings, but it still felt good to hear an idea that I've been advocating since before inauguration. Not that it's even an original idea or anything, heck I probably heard it from him. Still, hearing it from another commentator makes me think maybe I'm not beating a dead horse or totally off-base by mentioning it. There have been a rash of articles in the last day or so asking why no one is afraid of Hillary Clinton supporters, and why to be taken seriously a special prosecutor or national security officer has to be a republican. The first is in response to the breathless coverage of every reporter heading off into the heart of darkness and interviewing trump voters. Why is it, they ask, did the white working class back, and continue to back, a transparent con man over a very qualified public servant who happens to be a woman?

The answer is of course self-evident. But why was Hillary Clinton, and by extension her supporters and Democrats generally, held to such a high standard while the doughface skated on every. damn. thing. under. the. sun. Why are republicans treated so deferentially and Democrats as scurrilous outsiders by the supposedly liberal media? And why oh why does history disappear so damn quickly? If you take a step back and look objectively it is pretty easy to see that we have been an occupied country for a long time, doughface donny is not the first tyrant and probably not the last to occupy the federal government though he is the first to so blatantly shrug off even the appearance of being in charge. The Democrats only get a half-hearted turn at running things when the dopey republicans hired by the true owners of America screw things up so badly that it threatens long term profit potential.

Which is why O'Hehir's article was so maddening:

Wake up, liberals: There will be no 2018 “blue wave,” no Democratic majority and no impeachment

He claims to be the executive editor of Salon, so it seems likely that he either wrote or approved of this title. Now he may be entirely correct in this prediction, or he may not be, that is beside the point. His analysis; that "we" are placing entirely too much emphasis on these local but national proxy elections, symbolic victories or defeats are just that and "we" should not get too wrapped up in it. So I guess all of "you" who were out there doing it should be ashamed of yourselves or something. The first comment I read was something to the effect of "thanks jerk, I guess I won't bother voting or even trying." 

Really, enough with the clickbait headlines. If you can't attract readers with top line talent or hard hitting investigative journalism maybe "you" should get out of the way. This kind of analysis is almost the definition of Arthur M. Schlesinger's "wailer" in that Mr. O'Hehir claims no responsibility to anyone or anything, if he did then he wouldn't use this kind of tone. I, speaking for myself was not trying to glean national symbolic importance in these special elections, I just wanted to see a victory. Knowledge of the limitations is pretty important but on any given Sunday... Yes, David Daley makes a strong case for how sealed up the gerrymandering and voter suppression has gone but knowing that ahead of time could make a difference if organizers and GOTV efforts operated with with the depths of republican lying, cheating, and stealing in mind and planned accordingly. Also, those maps are now in their penultimate use, people come of age, die, move away, move in, and have their motivation to vote swing up and down all the time.

So then we get to his follow up last Saturday, where O'Hehir claims he wasn't just shamelessly trolling his readers. He then makes the case that he was just trolling the Democratic Party; great, the wailing kicks in by the fourth paragraph.

I can only agree: I didn’t answer that question because I don’t know the answer. What I do know, or at least fervently believe, is that American democracy is in a state of profound and potentially terminal decay, and that if President Donald Trump is the most glaring symptom he is definitely not the cause. Of course I don’t know for sure what will happen in the 2018 midterms, but I can see no possible outcome that makes everything suddenly OK again, and I think investing too much hope in a flailing political party, a rigged congressional map and a miracle comeback is a really good way to drain the Trump resistance of its power and meaning.

That was a response to criticism that O'Hehir doesn't have any answers, other than to rag on the Democrats and condescend to the millions of energized liberals trying their best to kick and drag their neighbors and the party into some kind of action. What follows is a lengthy digression into how both parties are working on the same failed assumptions, you know, complete nonsense. We have one party interested in governing a decent society, however timidly and certainly not committed to real equality or the dignity of a middle class life for the poorly-educated. But the other is actively committed to an out-and-out traitor to this country, an incompetent buffoon, all in the name of wrecking the government and cracking open the state to drain it's wealth. They are not the same and are not operating under the same rules no matter what lengths O'Hehir goes to in order to denigrate the Democratic Party.

Gotta take this one day at a time. There's no silver bullet, no white knight to ride in and fix everything. And the day that O'Hehir gets off his high horse to either surgically install spines in the Democrats we have or build something that can replace them I might start to take him seriously. But we're not going to get there tomorrow.