Is progressivism still relevant?

[leftofthedial]

In a world that is increasingly self-referential in all aspects and less-and-less based on reality (whatever that was) . . .

In a world in which the superficial is relentlessly valued above the substantive . . .

In a world remade almost wholly as a corporate landscape . . .

In a political climate gone so far wrong, in which money has more rights than human beings--and that is increasingly viewed as a good and natural thing . . .

In a world in which attention spans and the ability to reason are seemingly in a devolutionary race to see which will be the first to disappear altogether . . .

In a world faced with global environmental collapse . . .

In a world in which leaders are encouraged by their constituents to place the leader's own money, power and political pragmatism above the most basic sense of principle, because calling them venal would make the “home team” appear weak . . .

In a world in which fundamentalism is the only discernible ideological trend . . .


. . . what is the point of being a progressive?

[bluerum]

1. Oh I don't know. Maybe you are right. Guess I'll become conservative.

NOT!

[leftofthedial]

19. you could become a centrist, or like I once was, a "pragmatist."

:shrug:

[bluerum]

29. I am a liberal - and this drivel will not change that. nt

[leftofthedial]

30. drivel?

don't go changin'

[bluerum]

31. Nothing personal - I just don't see any legitimate challenges to

liberal or progressive thought.

There is always crap in the world - always has been always will be. I think part of being a liberal is understanding this and trying to ease the pain for those who suffer. It is incumbent upon us.

[leftofthedial]

37. I can't believe any other way than progressive. it's right and smart

and good

BUT

It's also starting to make me feel a little like Don Quixote.

[bluerum]

46. Yeah - know what you mean, But I would rather feel like Don Quixote

than a shot up Iraqi or an abandoned hurricane victim or a senior citizen who can't afford medication and health care.

[Vexatious Ape]

2. because

One needs something to believe in or life will seem kind of pointless. Maybe.

[leftofthedial]

13. is progressivism an abstract ideal then

and not a plan for making the world better?

[kenny blankenship]

3. Not in a purely national context

The problem progressivism seeks to make progress against has metastasized into a problem that respects no national borders and plays one country against all others. If you want to make progress against it, you must seek political mobilization that goes beyond national borders as well.
Many people hereabouts continue to think in terms of restoring the old social contract between the capital owning elites and the ordinary citizens who work for wages and salaries. They think this is an American problem with an American solution. That is simply not possible. It is not possible within the old familiar construct of the nation state--no nation state can do it, not even this one.
It might be possible however, "in a world."

But just to say that instantly hints at how enormous and improbable is the work of re-constituting a binding social contract. This will be a labor like building the Great Pyramid from building blocks all of which each are pyramids themselves.

[Hardrada]

8. That is why it is "The Industrial Workers of the World."

That is why one line of the Internationale us "A better world's in birth."
That is why there were such things as Third Internationals and Cominterns and the legendary International Brigades in Spain. The ideas of the Left are international. And indestructible (because they are always ideas which can sooner or later be turned into practice).

[leftofthedial]

14. that's why I said "a world" and not "a country"

it's global

will the ideas always exist?

will the existence of an idea always imply that it can be turned into practice?

[leftofthedial]

12. good points

it's a global struggle.

[Cyrano]

4. Right and wrong are not measured by how many agree with you.

[leftofthedial]

15. that's true, right up until you are the last who understands

and there is a boot on your neck and a gun pointed at your head.

[The2ndWheel]

5. You want an argument? You really want an argument?

Well I can't give you one.

The environment(whether it's climate change, or poisoning our own sources of life) and the global corporate state takeover are my main issues. Throw in the never ending religious hatred, and we've carved ourselves a nice little civilization. I can't find a reason why we're not all completely screwed, no matter what we do.

[leftofthedial]

16. it's getting harder

isn't the first and most important task of the evil ones to destroy hope?

[EFerrari]

6. What is the point of being a progressive?

When was there a greater need for progressives?

Who else would take on the world you describe and remake it, every day, different and better -- a relationship or a conversation or a crew at a time? Enron? Pizer? Halliburton? I think they're booked up already.

:)

[leftofthedial]

17. but there is less and less room for and respect for progressives

even within our own party

progressivism is far too extreme

it alienates too many

it guarantees that "we" (whoever that is anymore) will "lose" the big game.

[EFerrari]

20. Define your own space. Define your own game.

The big game is living your values. That's all it is, ever.

Everything else is shiney cr@p that you'll toss out next January.

:hug:

[leftofthedial]

24. thanks for the hug and the encouragement

but the shiny crap is killing us all.

[EFerrari]

25. So, we keep up the good fight. We can start here:

We have a choice between despair and our imaginative endrun around the producers of shiney crap.

You know what I choose. :evilgrin:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x700927

[madrchsod]

7. it better be

or will we all be fucked..i for one never want to go back to yesterday.

[leftofthedial]

18. yesterday is not so bad

900 AD might kind of suck

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[leftofthedial]

21. if this is childish

then teach your children

define "goodness" in specific enought terms to discuss and that would be an excellent topic

children are still relevant, especially to those who have more of them or whose children have a decent chance of survival

judging by the current EPA, oxygen, for example, is less relevant than it once was

physics is certainly relevant, else bombs wouldn't work.

[omega minimo]

10. "Venal"

Wuz dat? :evilgrin:

"In a world in which attention spans and the ability to reason are seemingly in a devolutionary race to see which will be the first to disappear altogether . . .in which leaders are encouraged by their constituents to place the leader's own money, power and political pragmatism above the most basic sense of principle, because calling them venal would make the “home team” appear weak . . ."


:hi:

[leftofthedial]

22. in the vein of venality

is it inappropriate for a lifelong Democrat to accuse a Democratic politician of being open to bribery or of betraying honor, principle or scruples for a price?

is that just too progressive?

[omega minimo]

27. The fact that Boxer (1-6-05) and Feingold had to stand alone answers this

sort of.

The common denominator (as the labels are tricky) will be to unify all the folks that recognize that corporate interests rule the government.

I know Independents and Repub/Lites and non-voters who will get on that bandwagon. They are waiting for ANY pubic figure, like Feingold, to stand up and tell the truth.

The DINOS have defined themselves with this one. Folks who think "we have to win the House back first"-- well good luck. So in the meantime, that means NOT telling the truth about what's going on?


Fuck strategery.

[leftofthedial]

28. yup

you can't have it both ways, which is what many of the Dems sure as hell look like they are doing

Even the idiot Murkan public can smell something fishy

[omega minimo]

34. There seems a Dem/Lib/Prog. blind spot though

if we don't acknowledge the "idiot Murkan public" already KNOWS that corporations are runnin everything. It ain't radical no more. In business, I hear Repub/Lites talkin to other Repugs about it. And they know that Congress is compromised/corrupt. Corporate rule is an open secret.

[leftofthedial]

41. corporations are psychotic

and they are in control

it is like we have willingly ceded power over our lives to psychotic machines.

[omega minimo]

44. Not I

"it is like we have willingly ceded power over our lives to psychotic machines."

[Peace Patriot]

11. You say "in a world...". "In a world that..." "In a world in which..."

But you are not speaking of the world. You are speaking of the United States--an increasingly isolated and out-of-touch country in a world where astonishing progress is being made right here in our own hemisphere, toward democracy, self-determination, social and economic equity, and empowerment of the poor brown and black majority.

A truly amazing leftist revolution has been sweeping South America--with leftist governments elected in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela and Bolivia. Way-leftist governments in Venezuela and Bolivia, and soon in Peru as well--with the revolution probably moving north to Mexico this year (Mexico City's leftist mayor is ahead in the polls). Bolivia just elected its first indigenous Indian president (Evo Morales), and an indigenous is the frontrunner in Peru (Ollanta Humala). A socialist woman was just elected president in Chile--their first woman president (Michele Batchelet, who was tortured by the US-backed dictator Pinochet). A labor leader is president of Brazil (Lula da Silva, who led the third revolt at the World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun). These governments are joining together in regional cooperation against US/IMF/World Bank domination, and have many common goals, in addition to throwing off US imperialism--including providing schools, medical care, small business grants and other assistance to vast poor populations who have never before been served by government.

It is a vast, historic and unstoppable revolution. Here's a good information site on it: www.venezuelanalysis.com.

One of the keys to this revolution is TRANSPARENT elections--the result of years of hard work by grass roots activists, local civic groups, the OAS, EU election monitoring groups and the Carter Center. (U.S., take note: Transparent elections = good government. Non-transparent elections = the Bush junta.*).

Let's try not to be so myopic. History's trend is overwhelmingly democratic and progressive. What we're seeing in the Bush junta is a desperate "tooth and talons" grab at the world's last oil resources, and a piggish wallowing in non-existent money ($8 trillion deficit) as they loot us blind and kill the 'golden goose' of the American middle class. Desperate, thieving, murderous jerks. They have almost no support--the same idiot 'christians' who have always been with us, allied with the giant corporate pigs and war profiteers, a tiny minority of people who control all our wealth, all the images we see, with all news and opinion brought to us by five mega-monopoly, war profiteering, corporate propaganda machines.

The Latin Americans have revolted against them--peacefully and democratically, and against great odds. We can, too.

Just because you don't hear progressive views on corporate-propaganda TV or radio, or read them in corporate-propaganda newspapers, doesn't mean that the vast majority of Americans don't agree with you. You are in fact part of a great progressive American MAJORITY--which I could prove to you overwhelmingly just with opinion and issue polls over the last several years, but I won't do it here. Trust me. You are by no means alone. And there is a REASON that this great progressive American majority is UNREPRESENTED in Washington DC....

------------------

*In the 2001-2004 period, two rightwing Bushite corporations--Diebold and ES&S--gained control of the tabulation of 80% of our nation's votes, using "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code in the new, highly insecure, highly hackable electronic voting systems, with virtually no audit/recount controls, as the result of the $4 billion "Help America Vote Act" boondoggle, engineered by the two biggest crooks in Congress, Tom Delay and Bob Ney. No controls on partisan vendors. No control on lavish lobbying. No control on "revolving door" employment. No paper trail requirement. No control on secret industry 'testing' of the machines. Greatly underfunded regulation, by a Bush-appointed commission. This bill was intended to corrupt election officials across the country, and destroy our election system--and that's what it did.

Diebold's CEO Wally O'Dell was a Bush/Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser, who promised in writing to "deliver" Ohio's electoral votes to Bush/Cheney in 2004. ES&S, a spinoff of Diebold (similar computer architecture), was initially funded by rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon Foundation (which, among other things, touts the death penalty for homosexuals). These two companies have an incestuous relationship--they are run by two brothers, Tod and Bob Urosevich.

These are the people who are 'counting' our votes behind a veil of secrecy.

On election night 2004, the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, acting in concert through one polling organization (Edison-Mitofsky) shut down the election reporting system, and FALSIFED their own exit polls (Kerry won) to 'FIT' the results of Diebold's and ES&S's secret vote tabulation formulae (Bush won)--thus denying the American people major evidence of election fraud, and squelching protests and calls for investigation. They first of all failed to inform the American people WHO had gained control of the vote tabulation, and that the computer programming was SECRET and the results UNVERIFIABLE; then they colluded in covering up evidence of a wrong result.

The Democratic Party leadership--due to corruption, collusion, fear and/or insanity--SAID NOT ONE WORD about righwing fascists 'tabulating' the votes in secret, and quickly caved to a non-transparent, unverifiable, Bushite-controlled result.

The 2004 election was not an election. It was a coup.

Non-transparent elections are not elections. They are tyranny.

And THAT is WHY things are the way they are--with an out of control fascist junta running our government.

We must change this. It's going to be hard work, and it may be a long slog through every state/local jurisdiction. But we MUST do it. We MUST throw Diebold and ES&S election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor,' and restore our right to vote! Control over election systems still resides with state/local jurisdictions, where ordinary people still have some influence. That's where we must act, now, to throw corrupt election officials out and restore election transparency.

THEN you will see a revolution here such as we have never seen before.

---------------

Some resources:

www.votersunite.org (MythBreakers - easy primer on electronic voting--one of the myths is that HAVA requires electronic voting; it does not.)
www.verfiedvoting.org (great activist site)
www.votetrustusa.org (news of this great movement from around the country)
www.UScountvotes.org (statistical monitoring of '06 and '08 elections)
www.solarbus.org/election/index.shtml (fab compendium of all election info)
www.freepress.org (devoted to election reform)
www.bradblog.com (also great, and devoted to election reform)
www.TruthIsAll.net (analysis of the 2004 election)
Sign the petition (Russ Holt, HR 550, great bill-has 169 sponsors). http://www.rushholt.com/petition.html
www.debrabowen.com (Calif Senator running for Sec of State to reform election system)
www.votepa.us (well-organized local group of citizen activists in Pennsylvania, where important legal issues are at stake, including state's rights over election systems)

Also of interest:

Bob Koehler (-- four recent election reform initiatives in Ohio, predicted to win by 60/40 votes, flipped over, on election day, into 60/40 LOSSES!--the biggest flipover we've seen yet; the election theft machines and their masters are now dictating election policy!)
www.tmsfeatures.com/tmsfeatures/subcategory.jsp?file=20051124ctnbk-a.txt&catid=1824&code=ctnbk

Bob Koehler's latest: "Take this box and stuff it" (3/16/06)
http://commonwonders.com/archives/col337.htm

Amaryllis (Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia lavish lobbying of election officials - Beverly Hilton, Aug. '05)
www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x380340

----------------------------------------

Throw Diebold, ES&S and all election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW!

:think: :patriot: :woohoo: :patriot: :think:

[leftofthedial]

23. we need massive election reform including elimination of the machines

IMHO, 2000, never mind 2004, was a coup.

--or at least the first unambiguous sign of a coup that happened earlier.

I don't see an inexorable historical trend toward democracy. I see peaks and valleys (somewhat more valleys than peaks). I also see us on the downhill side of the most recent peak. I also see much about "democracy" in our modern capitalist world that is not democratic at all, but is a carefully constructed chimera, a facade, the illusion of freedom--maintained in the name of increasing consumption. Sorry to be so pessimistic, but didn't the Soviet Union used to have transparent elections? Who is actually "free" to run for office in the modern world?

[EFerrari]

26. No need to apologize. If you comb the threads, a LOT of DUers

have been having a gut searching weekend -- or week, or month or months.

Grieve. We all have to do that. That's just real.

But then, come please help in the Elections forum. We NEED you.

Help the NAACP with their current action.

There's so many things needed. A person can do one or even some of them.

Don't apologize for the pessimism. It's just part of the job. We are pessimism surfers. And we are damn fine ones, too.

[Peace Patriot]

36. No other democracy in the world has quite the extent of filth in the

political system that WE do--minimum $1 million to buy a Congressional seat. Prior to the 2004 election, I had vowed to make eliminating money from our political campaigns the remaining quest of my life, with a Constitutional amendment idea. But after 2004, I realized we have to step backward and FIRST recover our very right to vote itself, from the Delay/Ney/Diebold/ES&S takeover of the voting system.

Most democracies have public TV/radio candidate access, healthy public debate, limit the length of campaigns, limit the money in campaigns (far, far more strictly than we do), and have multiple candidates and parties. Our system is utterly corrupt--totally controlled by the rich and by giant corporations, and now, including the very voting technology itself (with "trade secret" vote tabulation software, no less).

We tend to get myopic here, in the U.S., and see conditions in the U.S. as conditions in the whole world. We never hear about how they vote in Germany, for instance (boy, are they tough on election TRANSPARENCY!), or Canada (all paper ballot, easily counted in one day), or Norway, or Sweden, or France, or Ireland, or Venezuela, for that matter (OPEN SOURCE code!!!!), or Bolivia (indigenous Indian just elected president), or Chile (socialist woman, tortured by Pinochet, just elected president), or any of dozens of transparent and far more honest election systems, which is why those countries have far better governments than we do. It is a stretch to even call the U.S. a democracy any more--especially with the latest corporate coup, non-transparent electronic 'voting.'

Yeah, there are chimeras and facades and illusions of freedom in some other democracies, but nothing so false as we have here, now--with a fascist junta in the White House and an "Iron Curtain" over the news. Both of these things--illegitimate government, propagandist press--have been building for a long time, by increment. I would say we were not very free under Clinton. He signed NAFTA and other trade agreements, for instance, that Congresspeople hadn't read, and that no one consulted the American people about--basically giving away our sovereignty and beginning the massive outsourcing of jobs. That was highly corrupt. And the Democratic Party had already become highly corrupt--starting way back when they winked and nodded at the Reagan war on Nicaragua, and at the first re-write of the tax code to favor the rich. (They all benefited, is why--our party leaders are millionaires, most of them.)

When you say "our modern capitalist world," which part of the capitalist world are you referring to? There is capitalism and there is capitalism. In France, capitalism includes cradle to grave health care of the highest quality. In Germany, capitalism includes workers sitting on the boards of major corporations. It includes six weeks paid vacation for ALL workers. In Venezuela, capitalism--for instance, producing and selling oil all over the world--includes using some of those revenues to build schools and medical clinics for the vast poor of Venezuela, never before served by government, and providing small business loans and grants to diversify the economy and assist the poor in getting a bootstrap up.

Only here (of the democratic countries) does capitalism mean massive thievery by the rich, looting of pension funds, looting of state tax surpluses by energy giants, looting of savings and loan institutions, destruction of emergency services, leaving the poor to rot and die, destroying the middle class, deregulation of polluters, and conscienceless spending to benefit war profiteers and oil giants, with money stolen from the future. No other democracy in the world would put up with this.

But the veils over our unfreedoms here are definitely being ripped off. That we've crossed the line, here in the U.S., from predatory capitalism to outright fascism is becoming more apparent every day. Something's got to give--and it will probably be the economy. This "carefully constructed chimera" is about to be blown away by reality: Do you know that they are stealing now from the government workers' pension systems? We are going to become a country of street people and beggars. No more chimera. What a scam it has all been!

As the United States suffers deconstruction, then we might get some our touted freedom back--when there is nothing left to loot. And I am quite serious about that. When they have no reason to steal our votes any more--then we might be able to put the Humpty Dumpty of U.S. democracy back together--with some good socialist ideas, such as a cap on wealth, a cap on ownership of land, a cap or ban on foreign ownership of land and other assets, de-chartering monopolistic corporations and seizing their assets, profits from natural resources benefiting the common good, a ban on private control of public trust resources, a progressive income tax, public control of the public airwaves, making both private and Social Security pension funds untouchable, recognition of the worker and not capital as the real creator of wealth, forbidding usurious lending rates, adequate funding of public libraries and education, banning all private money in political campaigns, busting up the Republicrat Party, reducing the military budget by 90% (to what's needed for defense only--no more optional wars), and green ideas such as real agriculture/unpolluted food, solar and other alternative energy, recycling of all products--and other wild notions, essential to the good of all of our citizens.

Democracy has had its ups and downs for sure. But I guarantee you that you would not want to live in any previous era, in any of the major cultures of the world, not even as recent as the 1950s/60s USA, during which black citizens were still being lynched and women were banned from most careers, and the US was only just beginning its slaughter of some 2 million people in Southeast Asia. I was born at the beginning of that post-WW II era, and bear its scars. You couldn't pay me to go back. I'll take THIS era, even with its backsliding--which I consider mostly to be an illusion of the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, giving the rightwingnuts a BIG TRUMPET with which to promulgate their views, way out of proportion to their numbers. I think we live in an enlightened age--despite all. And I frankly don't see any sign that the Bush junta or its propaganda lapdogs have made even a dent in the progressive views of the great majority of Americans. They simply have not. Read the issue polls over the last few years! Their purpose has not been to convince; their purpose has been to loot.

I think that social and human rights progress are inexorable. Once an idea of freedom--whether its serfs owning land, or workers having rights, or ending the ownership of one human being by another, or voting rights for black citizens, or permitting divorce, or permitting women to be educated as doctors and lawyers, or freedom of speech, or freedom of religion--has been thought of, and struggled for, the memory does not go away. It remains a shining beacon, pulling people toward it. And even if there is backsliding, and even if there is major fascist retrenchment, the democratic idea, once born, always returns and is embraced, often even more so than before. There was a time, not that long ago, when true equality for women was unthinkable--was even laughable to some--because it had never been the case before, in any major culture. But it will never be unthinkable again. There was a time when owning slaves was the norm in some cultures. It is now unthinkable in most of the world, and only exists in small patches and is--and has to be--hidden. The idea of workers rights and labor unions, born in the west (out of the industrial revolution), is now spreading to Asia and other regions. It may have been eclipsed and minimized in OUR country--but it is fundamental in other democracies, and is an idea that will never go away. Where it is eclipsed, it will come back. Where it is forbidden, it will arise. The idea of free scientific and academic inquiry--somewhat stifled here by corporate (and now Bush junta) control efforts--will always come back. Scientists and academics, and ordinary people, will always rebel against restrictions on thought.

Because that's how the human brain is constructed--to be free.

[leftofthedial]

38. that's very well said

thanks.

[Hardrada]

32. Yes.

[leftofthedial]

39. That's also very well said.

Thanks.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

33. In the rest of the world, it's making quite a comback.

We, in 'murka, are the barbarians fighting the rising tide.

[leftofthedial]

42. corporations are multinational

where else is actual progressivism ascendant? Seems to me it's under seige, or actually being stamped out.

[Hardrada]

45. Not so.

Check out South America and such phenomena as worker-owned factories.

[ulysses]

35. what is the point?

Variety, if nothing else.

[leftofthedial]

40. works for me

that and the fact that I can't believe anything else.

[OneBlueSky]

43. progressivism is the only thing that IS relevant . . .

given that the alternatives are either status quo or regression . . . neither of which is going to solve anything . . .