politics and mythology

Are you looking for someone to blame for all your troubles? Would you like to have an enemy with whom you become so obsessed that you never have to confront your own character defects, neuroses, or irrational fears? Are you seeking a talented actor to play the part of the villain in your little drama? Someone so stupid, selfish, mean, and ugly that he brings out the worst in you, and enables you at the same time to feel good about it?

Your search is over; the "furthest left elements" of the Democratic Party are here to minister to your every need. Now of course, the ideal state of mind outlined above only works if the "furthest left elements" of the Democrats are in charge of the party -- if Obama actually is a socialist who wants to redistribute income, and Nancy Pelosi a committed Maoist determined to tax your income to the hilt and give the proceeds to people less deserving than you. So forget that these contentions are strictly from the fun house hall of mirrors rather than facts. Where's the harm in literally believing in myths if they're useful?

And the good news, as Glenn Greenwald points out this morning, is that you can believe these or similar things, even if you're a Democrat! To wit:

Last night, Evan Bayh blamed the Democrats' problems on "the furthest left elements," which he claims dominates the Democratic Party -- seriously. And in one of the dumbest and most dishonest Op-Eds ever written, Lanny Davis echoes that claim in The Wall St. Journal: "Blame the Left for Massachusetts" (Davis attributes the unpopularity of health care reform to the "liberal" public option and mandate; he apparently doesn't know that the health care bill has no public option [someone should tell him], that the public option was one of the most popular provisions in the various proposals, and the "mandate" is there to please the insurance industry, not "the Left," which, in the absence of a public option, hates the mandate; Davis' claim that "candidate Obama's health-care proposal did not include a public option" is nothing short of an outright lie).

In what universe must someone be living to believe that the Democratic Party is controlled by "the Left," let alone "the furthest left elements" of the Party? As Ezra Klein says, the Left "ha[s] gotten exactly nothing they wanted in recent months."

You'd think if we were in charge of the Democratic Party, which holds the executive power and has big majorities in both houses of Congress, you'd think we'd have gotten something we wanted, wouldn't you? But it hasn't happened, and furthermore, it's not to be as long as we're looking to Democratic slugs like Evan Bayh and Rahm Emanuel to help us. Here's Arianna Huffington from a few days ago, on why "'Hope' has been a bust, (and) it's time for Hope 2.0."

What we need is Hope 2.0: the realization that our system is too broken to be fixed by politicians, however well intentioned -- that change is going to have to come from outside Washington.

This realization is especially resonant as we celebrate Dr. King, whose life and work demonstrate the vital importance of social movements in bringing about change. Indeed, King showed that no real change can be accomplished without a movement demanding it.

With what's-his-name Brown's senate victory in Massachusetts, we're on the verge of being told "the votes aren't there" for health care reform or anything else we want. And Huffington goes on to point out that unless we're willing to take to the streets in large numbers, in order to force a change in the votes that "aren't there" at the moment, we never will get anything.

The perfect example of this came in March 1965. In an effort to push for voting rights legislation, King met with President Lyndon Johnson. But LBJ was convinced that the votes needed for passage weren't there. King left the meeting certain that the votes would never be found in Washington until he turned up the heat in the rest of the country. And that's what he set out to do: produce the votes in Washington by getting the people to demand it. Two days later, the "Bloody Sunday" confrontation in Selma -- in which marchers were met with tear gas and truncheons -- captured the conscience of the nation. And five months later, on August 6th, LBJ signed the National Voting Rights Act into law, with King and Rosa Parks by his side.

At that March meeting, LBJ didn't think the conditions for change were there. So Dr. King went out and changed the conditions.

Unfortunately, the movement we need is nowhere on the horizon, and without a leader possessing Dr. King's charisma and stature, I don't see one materializing. Maybe the dreadful condition of our system of governance will produce such a leader, and maybe not. But either way, it's time to give up on the political process. Trying to get anything good out of it at this point is like trying to get blood out of a turnip.