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Is politics passing you by? Are your elected Representatives doing things that you never wanted, never imagined they'd do? Do you feel they're not doing enough to stop the Boy Who Would Be King? Do you suspect the motivations and political aspirations of many, if not most, of our would-be Democratic candidates for the next Presidential election?
You're not alone. A lot of us out here in the digitial hinterlands feel the same way. The Right Wing was right about one thing. We're angry. Of course, with an quagmire of an illegal war, rendition, torture, illegal wiretapping, voter suppression, "free speech zones," mysterious anthrax attacks, obstruction of justice at the highest levels, and the top-down failure of leadership, we might have a few reasons to be angry.
It says a lot about the Right Wing that they're NOT angry. I mean, aren't they the ones who are trying to say Bushco abandoned conservative values in an attempt to distance themselves from this political disaster that is the Bush Administration?
Aren't they the same people who've been cheering all along until they realized that the whole thing could well blow up in their faces? They claim it until it goes awry, as it inevitably would, and then try to pretend it's not what they always wanted?
Reading the news is like getting slapped in the face every morning. There's always another outrage, another miscarriage of justice, another incident of human stupidity or malice reflecting the alleged "moral values" of this crowd.
The corporate media and Big Money run the system now and those who are probably the best of our potential candidates are not driving the debate as hard as they could have, had they been given equal access.
We rant and rail against OUR elective representatives, prompting some to react with shocked amazement that we could say such things. If people camping out on your sidewalk with "impeach" signs don't convince you that the people want something to happen, I'm not sure what will.
Well, actually, I AM sure what will. We fight to replace them. We build our own political organization from the ground up and take over the organization from the inside. The same thing the religious radicals did with the Republican Party.
It's the best way to fight back. By simply doing it, we'd be creating pressure on our current delegates to work harder on our behalf. Because, if they falter, they know that others are waiting in the wings to take their places.
In areas where progessive candidates do well, we start running more aggressively progressive candidates in the primaries. We start local and spread. At this point it's probably the only effective threat we have against the quislings, old guard, and status quo politicos in "service" today.
If we want a more progressive government, we'll have to become that more progressive government. The only other choice is to give up.
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