Disclaimer: This essay in no way suggests that we should lessen our efforts or become complacent and uninvolved!!!
After eight years of failure, we are starting to succeed. Can we handle that?
On torture for instance, by far the greatest danger was that the change in administrations would cause the Bush War Crimes to be swept under the rug. Now we can see that it will not be.
That is a success!
There is still much work to be done of course, but hey, we won! We cleared the first hurdle after eight years of having everything we were trying to achieve shot down at the first hurdle by Cheney’s Assassination Squads.
Now political success is always relative. It IS the art of compromise. But that was a lost art under Bush. The absolute key to compromise, to negotiation, is asking for more than you want and then in the best case scenario, compromising down from those demands to getting to what you actually wanted in the first place. Asking, for that first goal, asking for too much is OUR job, the job of the Far Left.
And right now, as reality is showing us starkly and plainly…..anyone to the Left of Arlen Specter is the Far Left!
So yes, WE do ask for European Style Socialism and safety nets, WE call for an end to war, WE call for every economic policy that will take power from the Ruling Class and give it to the poor.
And that means that we will ALWAYS “lose.”
Because we won’t get what we ask for. We will always get something less. We will get compromised.
And that, my Far Left friends…..is success.
Because for the last eight years, we haven’t gotten squat.
So keep Yelling!
But also quietly acknowledge our successes when they come.
Because now they WILL come.
34 comments
Skip to comment form
Author
on a day when my brain resembles a…
and the soul.
Good to celebrate milestones and incremental victories!
An end to war?
A call for every economic policy that will take power from the Ruling Class and give it to the poor?
Wow, that all sounds pretty centrist compared to Congress and the Administration. 😉
I guess I’ll have to keep blogging and pulling to move things leftward, huh?
I’ll have to yell and do something else at the same time. What a concept. Good thing I don’t chew gum.
(Thanks for the fuzzy.)
ask for much more than what you want so that when you are bargained down in compromise (haggling) you will have what you want. i did this for haunted houses (we put these on for several years when the kids outgrew trick-r-treat) i would go begging…ask for 50 lbs of nails, end up w/3 lb…which is what i needed….ask for 400 2X4’s to build a maze, end up w/125.._more_ than i needed…
we need to do the same to obama & congress.
imo.
Okay, so the torture memos got released. Yes, that is terrific. Now it needs to be followed up with full prosecutions of all guilty parties, NO EXCEPTIONS. Without that vital action, it won’t matter how many documents are made public because none of it will result in true JUSTICE.
I should do so good on a “good day”!
Hopefully, collectively, we can make it so. We all bring different gifts to the table.
It really is essential, though, to understand how it works, this negotiating. It only takes a few (I hope) times to go in, asking just for what you want, and see it get smacked down to nothing, to figure it out.
So, yes, Im on board with all that. But then… some things are just, hmmm, not negotiable, in the same sense, but it still has to be played. Thats a little bit harder for me. Like Rule of Law. How do you bargain down from that? (rhetorical question).
a failure unless the economy, as he sees it, turns around.
That won’t happen without big-time consumer spending.
That won’t happen without lots of new (well-paying) jobs and credit cards.
And that won’t happen.
Yeah. Obama’s better than the old guy (take your pick — McCain or shrub).
But substantively, he’s a far cry from what this country needs for a president.
we’ll see, eh?
I can’t recall any instance. That’s how they turned the Dems into a bunch of dickless donkeys. The fucktards do not accept any compromise – ever. Witness Limbaugh, Cornyn, Coleman …
Tey will not accept compromise. Eight years of dictatorial rule has totally warped their value systems – as if they had any to start with.
Hmm, I think I’m having one of those nights. I get cranky when ill and enjoyed the whole day in the local hospital getting diagnosed with bronchial-pneumonia. At least they didn’t keep me overnight in the MRSA wing. But boy do I feel cranky tonight.
needs making from time to time. We don’t jump to the Moon, we get there a step at a time and those steps should be celebrated.
and get back to work!
I’m good with that.