What goes around...

On Wisconsin!

I can't emphasize enough how important it is for the Democrats in Madison to hold their ground. This is the long haul, folks. The Repugs are playing their big hand and they are all in. Il Duce Walker won't budge. He can't. He's standing on the edge of his career and is trying not to fall into the abyss. He has to hold the line as long as possible and then some. Every Repug governor is watching him and taking notes. Daniels in Indiana, Kasich in Ohio and Christie in New Jersey are loading their guns as I write this. The Oligarchy starts now.

The new crop of Repugs, the Teabaggers, and Wall Street all want blood. There's no room for civility here. They are greedy, liberal-hating assholes and are damned proud of it. They have mouthpieces like Hannity, Limbaugh, and Beck stir up the base. Frank Luntz, Breibart, and Fox News keep the message pure and the Koch Bros. pump the necessary funds into the entire process. The ignorant base of the GOP laps this shit up like feeding time at the fish hatchery.

And why not? That's what they've been trained to do. Years of manipulation by the Right Wing have produced a huge element of ignorant, scared and angry people. When Carter took office, it gave the Right Wing Machine, the perfect opportunity to lay down the foundation of this movement. Carter's liberalism stoked the emotions enough to give seed to it. The fertilizer was Ronald Reagan and that's no metaphor.

Lee Atwater's spawn Karl Rove, Luntz, Limbaugh, and a host of others have spent the last 20 years crafting this movement toward a set of goals: the whole sale dismantling of the Democratic Party, rescind and reverse every progressive statute on the books and concentrating power in the hands of a few conservative corporate managers (ie: overlords) Just look at the what they've been up to lately:

1. they've voted to defund Planned Parenthood (defunding is a chickenshit way of destroying a law without actually voting it down. Take away its funding and it can't be enforced)
2. they've begun efforts to defund the health care law.
3. they're trying to defund NPR.
4. they're trying to defund financial reform. Let the bastards on Wall St. have our cake and eat it too.
5. They're trying to defund the EPA. It's anti-business to force corporations to produce safe and non-toxic products. Let the market decide who lives and dies.

There are many more. Basically, every progressive cause of the last 40 years is targeted. They want it all. NO discussion, NO compromise, NO stepping back. NO negotiation unless its to cede your position. Take a good long look at this and tell me it isn't the beginning of the end. I see the seeds of fascism scattered here and some of them are starting to sprout.

(from the World Dictionary...)

Fascism:
A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation
with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by
compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-
based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy
but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons
democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and
without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing
and external expansion." [Robert O. Paxton, "The Anatomy of
Fascism," 2004]

Perhaps this is a new form of fascism, one that adds to the Italian model but in American clothes. Either way, this is not a time to sit and watch. President Obama and the rest of the Democrats have to abandon this folly of trying to negotiate and compromise with the Repugs. We have to be just as hard nosed and resolved as they. We have the issues, we have the facts. This isn't about 'win - win', it's about survival. The only reason Walker is doing this now is because he's sure he can get away with it. He's betting his career on the marshmallow spine of the Democrats and expects to win big. Daniels, Christie, and Kasich are also pushing their bets into the pot.

Do we have it? Is it going to be another blow, another shot to the gut all in the name of 'compromise'? Are unions going to be sacrificed in order for Obama to keep the Repugs from getting mad at him?

I'm clueless on how this is going to turn out. I'm the last one to place a bet on anything. My track record on such things is horrible. But the stakes are high, damn high, so high that every progressive voice in this country needs to be shouting at the top of their lungs at it. Failure here will bring failure elsewhere.

The line in the sand happens now, not next month or next year but right fucking now.

On Wisconsin!

So Mote it Be,
David A.