Having been politically active for a full generation, having covered the Internet since 1985, online politics since 1996 and having been part of the Netroots since 2003, I enter the new era with a question never asked by liberals in my lifetime:
Make them own it.
Let's break that down into its component parts, because they are all important:
- Make means force, compel, staying on the case without rest and without mercy. It means you're the hammer, they're the nail, from now to the end of time. We are all Simon Wiesenthal now, and the criminals of the Bush Regime are the Nazis.
- Them means not just those in the Bush Regime who gave us these horrors, but all their enablers, including those in the media and those Democrats who let them get away with it.
- Own means you don't let them weasel out of their responsibility, now or ever. These people must not only be exiled, but kept out, forever. Note what the Reagan people did to Carterism (even though Jimmy Carter was a wise man decades ahead of his time). Hit them harder, longer, destroy them more thoroughly than Carter was destroyed.
- It means everything. The financial scandals. The Iraq War. The torture, the renditions, the eviscerating of the Constitution. All the actions of a government contemptible of government. Not only the actions, but the attitudes, and the ideology behind them, must be destroyed, called off limits by all future historians.
There is a difference between this work and the job of supporting the new Administration. The two tasks will diverge increasingly over time.
President Obama is going to take actions, and do business with people, whom we in the Netroots can't abide. He needs to hear our displeasure, respectfully. Let him know that we know, that we disapprove, that he is paying a price. But remember in this that he's our guy, so pick your spots. And be ready to back down.
Some good examples have been seen in the cabinet process. There was too much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the fact that many appointees to political positions had actual experience in politics, usually in the Clinton White House. Experience is not a disqualifier, not necessarily, but if that experience mainly consisted of putting down liberal ideas on behalf of conservative ones, we have a problem. There are differences in tactics, as between Rahm Emanuel and Howard Dean. Then there are differences in policy. That's where we pounce.
The best examples in this week's news are the anger over Leon Panetta and Sanjay Gupta. The first is a test we're now passing, no small thanks to Rachel Maddow, who is becoming a real North Star on how to react in these matters. (Why NBC is doing to her what Republicans did to Sarah Palin is another blog post.) The second is a test we may yet fail, as those who wish to make the perfect the enemy of the good give the President friendly fire that can only help our enemies.
But there is a far more important part of the task I need to emphasize.
Offense.
Liberals have gained a lifelong preference for playing defense. Too often we wait for a conservative to strike the blow and then cringe from it. This is the most important change we must make.
It's our job now to strike the blow. It's our job to set the agenda. It's our turn to have enemies, to cast them down and cast them out. People like John Yoo (above) who endorsed this torture regime must be destroyed. Those who like Harvey Pitt supported the lawlessness of our time must be systematically denied any place of honor in society.
Yoo and Pitt are long term projects, and there are many more like them to engage in. Some people can recant their sins, come under close scrutiny and perhaps, in time be forgiven. Others deserve Nuremberg. Yoo and Pitt are among them. There are others. Naming them, shaming them, and shaming all who might honor them, into their graves, is our job. That's how you really destroy a movement and keep it from rising.
If you need an example of what we need to do to these people, consider Ramsey Clark. The son of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Attorney General under Lyndon Johnson, he was hounded and hounded by the right, until he became a rather pathetic figure really (regardless of how you feel about what he said or what he tried to do in his later life). Bottom rail on top now.
The same goes for the institutions from which this evil sprang. I'm thinking of the think tanks, the corporate offices, and the whole Wingnut Welfare machine which gave birth to these machine men and women. We can start by campaigning, now, to rid the media of scum like Amy Holmes and Michelle Malkin, who do nothing but give hate an attractive female mouthpiece.
Now is the time when sites like Media Matters really come into their own. Having their words on the record, having them on tape, is a vital resource. Because many are going to try and weasel out of it, especially those who claim to work for "mainstream" media. Amazing how many enablers turn into Wernher von Braun when they're put under pressure. It's our job to apply that pressure.
It's a hard job. It's a long job. It's what the Netroots will be doing for the rest of our lives. But it's important work. It's vital. The whole polity of this country needs to be moved leftward, not just to inform better policies than we have had but to assure that the opposition which emerges from the Obama years bears no resemblance whatever to the banal, evil, feral human garbage we have had to live with for the last eight years.
Dana, how can WE do this when our Congress can’t be bothered to? They’ll never hold one hearing or impeachment or trial on the crimes of the Bush years. All our carping will be dismissed as noise to them. These are the same people who admit they don’t even bother to read the bills they vote for. Even Obama himself won’t bother, nor did he while he was in the Senate.
Anyone who even considers Mr. “There’s no healthcare crisis in this country” Sanjay Gupta (I play a doctor on TeeVee!), worries me. Sure, it’s a throwaway appointment, but Gupta’s a certified liar for his ambush on Michael Moore, the one man who, perhaps more than anyone else, gave us Bush in Florida because he spent a year vigorously rallying for Nader.
You answer a good question for our times: “…what is our role?” with accountability. But for me, this goes much, much farther than conservatism or liberalism. We must reinvent our government for modern times, including our justice system. We need to decide what kind of country we want we want to be. You can’t have healthcare if we’re perpetually at war. We’ll never go green if we have to fight the government every inch of the way (the next repub admin. will merely roll back any progress).
Obama just spent $700mn getting elected, and with McCain, the two candidates spent well over a billion. Obama didn’t reach out to Joe the Plumber, he stocked his cabinet full of people who’ve been there and done it before, including picking his VP and Sec. of State. Now we see the likes of Caroline Kennedy saying she’d like to start at the top and be given a Senate seat, all because she made a few campaign appearances? Moreover, the man is a god-believer who keeps all the wrong religious company over a lifetime. That shows bad judgment over the long term that he hasn’t awakened to these god-shucking fraudsters.
Obama will fail miserably, and his fall will be the hardest because everyone expects so much of him alone. He’s not the smartest guy, even though all the people on my TeeVee tell me so. He voted for FISA’s renewal. He’s in no hurry to end the Iraq War. He’s already decided not to take on Big Oil by not pursuing a windfall profits tax (the price of oil will rise again as sure as the Sun rises in the East). And my biggest worry? He graduated from Harvard Law. I’ve known plenty of people over the years who went to Harvard (Bush even got a degree there), and I have no respect for the school’s graduates.
If Obama’s not going to help us reinvent what we know as the U.S., then what happens when he fails. He won’t be in office long enough to make a dent with the problems before us.
what is copd webmd
Dana Blankenhorn: Make Them Own It
visit this weblink
Dana Blankenhorn: Make Them Own It