Panetta blasts defense cuts

[freshwest]

41. DLC died an ignominious death and is no more. The major problem for those I know in office, is morale.

When those who are most progressive and liberal and doing everything to protect civil liberties, human rights, the social safety net, unions, public works, the commons and the environment and vote against all that Bush stood for, Democrats seem to be silent.

I have seen my represented confronted with in your face brown shirt tactics by corporatists and those taken by the right wing funded media machine, their lives threatened even. When they don't even have the backing of those they stand up for, after the danger they have put themselves in, how do you think they feel? I've had some tear up at these meetings, seeing that ther is someone who still believes in the vision they got into politics to defend.

We diss the big money, even though most of it comes from progressive sources to Democrats in every race, but we cannot do this alone and we need the support of these well-off old time liberals that people seem to write off as behind the times. When we say that we no longer believe in them, you have to think a second.

While not you, but just a generic 'you,' in any of what I'm saying here. But I mean, if we don't believe in what they're doing, they learn the time for the New Deal and all that we tried to bring about in past are no longer alive. So we lose and it's not their fault.

We are presented with a multitude of voices, many that purport to be on our side, that are actually funded from the right, the Koch brothers, military suppliers, etc. As well as in the continuous voices of conspiracy talk, they are funded by the Koch brothers. Yet they never give that disclosure and people think they oppose the things that we oppose. They play us more than any politician can.

Their meme is that government is the problem, the big monster under the bed or the closet coming for us. What if the monster is next door, the citizen who makes money off of industries and or of privatization that we abhor? This is the battle that our representatives are facing on the grassroots level and they end up having to compromise on some things, but not all.

The media voices constantly say there is no difference, that the policies of the left have failed. This is said to demoralize the left, which means they are not the left, but libertarians in sheep's clothing, because they will support fascism if they get theirs first.

No, the policies of the left have been co-opted and allowed to languish due to lack of political activism by the people who would most benefit. So I urge you if you are able, to go meetings and listen to what the nuts and bolts of what may seem to be so boring, what we are losing daily in our communities by thinking that ALL we have to do is vote every 4 years.

Best wishes and thanks for the thoughtful reply.