I have been a Democrat my entire life...

[BrotherIvan]

125. I may sound strident, but it's late and I'm mad as hell.

It seems that the situation is so dire, the system so hopelessly broken that drastic measures must be taken. If there is no social or economic justice in a country, that country cannot call itself democratic nor civilized nor first world. Our elected representatives who wield the levers of power no longer listen to nor work for the people who elect them to serve.

We need IDEAS, STRATEGY, and GOALS.

I am always interested in the fact that Gandhi and later Martin Luther King found the philosophy of passive resistance in the writings Tolstoy. They took his ideas and put them into action. Passive resistance was a way to deal with an overwhelming force. There are other strategies for dealing with this problem, which gave rise to theories of unpredictable violence, i.e. terrorism, but as history has proven, the most successful course of action has been passive resistance. By harnessing the power of truth and justice, the empathy and power of the world's people can turn the tide. We, as well as many other countries, are witnessing a cruel austerity by the powers that be that can only be defeated by a collective effort that will demand sacrifice, but not the same kind of sacrifice as the masters have decreed.

The plutocracy has brought our country to its knees. It has made us wage slaves without the hope of a decent life, health, and now dignity and economic security in our old age. Our very basic needs have been sacrificed to their greed. When there are those who chant fear that the alternative to kleptocracy is more of the same just redder and meaner, we should brush them aside and refuse to listen. There are more than two choices.

The right wing has played a very long game. They have outflanked the left by creating think tanks and creating a zealous base that sat out elections or voted in Tea Party crazies to pull the party HARD right. They have achieved this over the span of forty years by being willing to do things Democrats would never be willing to do. They were willing to lose elections, run insane candidates, and propose unpassable legislation in order to get their real agenda through (see their success on reproductive issues).

They are so far ahead, that a small, incremental ground game cannot keep up. Change cannot come from within a corrupted system. It's time to come up with core ideas that fit the modern times in order to turn this ship in the right direction ( or the left as the case may be). Our country has been captured by financial and corporate interests. What can be done? The answer lies in the fact that we are still, despite the looming threat of globalization and distant markets to exploit, the golden goose in terms of a large economy and its impact upon the world. We are a consumer economy, and in our numbers, we have strength. We need a strategy to mobilize that strength and then convince the rest of the 99% to get on board. This is far more important that cheering any individual politician or party. I do not have the answers, but something must be done.

Enough.