I only get into trouble on DU when I try to get to what's real.

[spqr78]

284. Incrementalism moves both forward and back.

This might be the wrong place to post this, if it is I apologize, but no one who claims to be speaking for the progressives has expressed my perspective in anything resembling a coherent manner.

I apologize if this seems like an attack. It's not meant to be. It's just my personal, emotional reaction to what's been happening.

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If the New Deal and the Great Society legislation and regulations had remained intact, and the work that unions had been fighting and dying for since the late 1800s not been wiped away, and all the work of 100 years by progressives not been reversed by "centrist", Third Way, republican/Democrats over the past 25 years, progressives might be more receptive to the voting demographic that elected the politicians who caused it.

If anyone disputes the "black vote" elected Bill Clinton and his generation of pseudo-dems, there are many informative posts in this thread that explain it in great detail.

It doesn't help that when we warned that the DLC and it's champion Bill Clinton would do all of this, we were mocked and effectively thrown out of our own party. It's tough to see tragedy coming and be powerless to stop it. That's a large part of the BLMs argument, if I understand it correctly. That seeing these tragedies coming, and watching them happen over and over again is heartbreaking, and that having no one listen to you when you try to shout at the top of your lungs that it's happening, causes an anger that can't be ignored.

Progressives, in one form or another have been fighting for black lives since black people were livestock. Progressives have been fighting to improve the quality of black lives since reconstruction. Progressives have been sacrificing their lives, metaphorically and literally since before this country existed.

We've fought a lot of fights that benefited a lot of people.

I'm sorry if that's not politic to say, but it's true.

When I say that, I'm not asking for thanks or for any special favor. The good that was done is gone. There is nothing left to thank previous generations for. The scars my 90 year old grandfather still has from the beatings the cops and the union busters gave him for his effort to establish worker protections were wasted. There's no more 40 hour work week, or 8 hour day, and soon, no more unions at all.

It wasn't us that took all that away. It wasn't us that elected the criminals that stole the collected wealth of an entire generation of humans. We didn't have the numbers in the democratic party to prevent it. We still don't.

The fate of the American system of government (such as it is), is not actually the most pressing matter, neither is the fate of any demographic of America's citizens.

The next election will decide the the fate of the air we breath, the water we drink, and the food we eat. The next election will decide who lives and dies on a global scale. It will be unlike anything seen in human history. It will rival an ice age in its destruction.

Oh, yeah, there's gonna be an ice age. That's on the centrists too. We told you so.

Not satisfying, but it's all we get.
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Regarding the unrealistic hopes of progressives, there are two points I'd like to make.

First, there is a right and wrong way of doing things. There is away that works, and a way that doesn't. There are actions that improve peoples lives and actions they ruin them.

We advocate what is good and what works and will help people.

Centrists advocate whatever is popular, then do whatever is profitable to themselves and their benefactors once they have power.

That's the choice before you.

Second, change is always seen as unreasonable.
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Thank you for your time. I know I rambled, but I've been thinking about this since it happened and wanted to get it all down in one place. If this is unwelcome in this forum, I will remove it.