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[Ed. note: Worthy post deserving far more discussion and dissemination.]
Hat Tip to Eternal Vigilance for her/his comment last night.
Why would I vote for a party that promised me hope and change in the form of a new personality?
Warning Signs: Quick Involvement, Desperately pressures you for a commitment so you’re in a relationship in less than 6 months.
Why would I vote for a party that is actively trying to cut social security and has cut medicare?
Warning Signs: Elder abuse, Steals from you or take your money, Rigidly controls your finances, Engages in unlawful activity
Why would I vote for a party that is willing to follow the previous administrations politicization of DOJ?
Warning Signs: Has a history of bad relationships, Destroys the lives of others for political gain
Why would I vote for a party that is willing to let 45,000 Americans die each year from lack of health care?
Warning Signs: Causes physical and emotional battery or death
Why would I vote for a party that cuts back on the food stamp program?
Warning Sign: Withholds basic necessities
Why would I vote for a party that thinks it is just fine for the president to kill any American he chooses?
Warning Sign: Engages in unlawful activity . . .
Why would I vote for a party that is actively endangering a woman’s right to choose?
Warning Signs: Withholds basic health care, Disrespect for women in general
Why would I vote for a party that supports a president that helped BP get away with the murder of humans and an ecosystem?
Warning Signs: Ruins employment, Causes physical and emotional battery to you and/or your ecosystem
Why would I vote for a party that is willing to bail out the banks over main street and enables the banks to foreclose rather than negotiate?
Warning Signs: Locks you out of your home, Steals from you or takes your money, Repeated attacks on your sense of worth
Why would I vote for a party that believes that bipartisanship is more important than governing?
Warning Sign: Making the victim feel that there is no way out of the relationship
Why would I vote for a party that is willing to tax citizens for health care and hand the money to corporations while said corporations are responsible for deaths of citizens?
Warning Sign: Withholds health care as a basic human right
And speaking of murders, why would I vote for a party that continues the wars in the middle east?
Warning Signs: Fascination with weapons, Causes physical and emotional battery and death
Why would I vote for a party that had huge majorities and the presidency and did nothing with it?
I am walking away from my abuser. I am not walking into the arms of the other party. This is the only way I can see to save myself and my country. By taking the first tentative steps to freedom I know that a process will be found for representation that looks to the citizens of this country and not to the oligarchy.
[photo: Elephant wearing striped pants via Flickr]
55 Comments
Good diary – recommended
Bravo.
Most excellent, Mary. Thanks
Should be frontpaged on the mothership
Excellent and recommended.
Great post mary, really well done.
Thanks Everyone!
Absolutely spot on Mary.
Liberals/Progressives are in an abusive relationship with the DLC dominated Democratic Party. They expect us to do the heavy lifting come election time with phone banks, GOTV, knocking on doors, contributing funds, and voting. All the while they demean and ridicule us, and tell us to get real and grow up.
Fuck ‘em! If you don’t have a real progressive in your Congressional District (and not just someone who is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus), my advice is to not vote in that race at all. By all means vote the down ballot races but let the omission (or write-in) speak volumes. When the pollsters read the under vote they will know it’s because we chose not to vote for those neo-liberal ass-clowns.
My rep is Dirty Dan Lungren and a true progressive is running against him. I will vote against Dan.
BRAVO!
Dear Mary…
Standing on a large chair, clapping and cheering enthusiastically for the clarity, simplicity, and robust reality that is the essence of your post!
Great job! Thank you!
Ami Bera
I’ll be voting for him too
Maybe volunteering too … I’ll see. The national party really sucked the life out of me (see above). I volunteered for Gabe Castillo and Dr. Bill Durston — did a lot of work — when they ran against Lungren
Well said, Mary. Excellent.
Well said, Senator !
Highly recc’d !
me, too. I worked on both of Bill’s campaigns. He is such a nice person.
Wonderful questions, perfectly stated.
Sometimes all that is required to clarify a situation is a fresh frame of reference.
Thank you for letting us try on your perspective.
Personalized, to-the-point and easy-to-understand framing. Brava!
bravo — recommended and tweeted
hey miss mary! what she said! recommended.
before i could read your post i had to go back and read last night’s post.
it’s such a dilemma for all of us just what to do once we’ve stepped away from the dlc infested dems. it’s clear the relationship is over, just not clear yet what’s next.
Jeebus, weren’t we discussing the outlines of this just last night?
Sparkling work , Mary.
El Reccomundo!
Thank you for calling it like it is Senator. “My Country tis’ of thee sweet land of liberty of thee I sing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7Wt4XlXUrc
In a word: Flawless.
Bravo Mary Mc!
Rcc’d.
I’m walkin away with ya.
This game’s rigged no matter what party you register with.,
And a LAUGHABLE comment in that Eli Thread you refer to elsewhere by the person suggesting we need to elect liberals in the primary.
I wanna know the last time a liberal was even IN a primary?
Where was the liberal in the last one? Kuch? Hell, he folded on us with HCR.
That ain’t liberal.
Agreed.
This one speaks to the heart of all of our madness.
Just Walk Away.
*G*
Front page it FDL!
Lungren’s been a turd in CA’s punchbowl for far too long.
Wish I could vote against him.
Thank you Mary!
Lack of commitment to full employment was the final straw for me. They’re using high unemployment as a weapon against the public.
The R’s and D’s are both behaving like predators, they do not merit further support.
This is your best writing ever it should be frontpaged. I am in awe right now.
Wow, Mary. Spectacularly done.
And extra special applause for the essential conclusion of taking responsibility for yourself, rather than just running to find some “other.” That’s what changes the pattern. That’s the step we all need to take as a nation and a world.
Congratulations, Mary, and my very best wishes to you, and all of us, as we begin to discover who we really are.
Thank you so much.
This is the way of empires. At the end they become infected with dementia, making it difficult to change course on damaging policies like endless wars and such.
Beautifully written!
Yes.
This needs to be front paged, right now. Thanks Mary.
What is it exactly that you are doing or propose doing?
I have no plan. But as you can see I said “I know that a process will be found”. I have some ideas but they are only rattling around in my head right now. For me it might be working at the micro level of our culture to bring people together to do things like start a community garden or create our own jobs. Seems to me that we need to start working together (and I mean everyone) to thrive. Americans have been stuck for too long in or on their cars, couches and computer chairs.
Politics is really about survival and community. We need to start seeing it that way. The most important thing we can do is to heal the divide created by fear.
and I realize that many are already working at local levels and that people have come together. We need to see it as changing minds and bringing communites together to stand against the oligarchy. This is politics. We have been taken over by small minded, all powerful people who only see in the most myopic and destructive ways. Does this sound more like a fantasy than a hard driving idea? Yes, it may. But we need to work in different ways and reach out to everyone. Serfs have far less power than citizens. I don’t want my children and grandchildren to be caught in the horrible trap of servitude.
On a scale of 1 to 5 I’d give this post 6 stars, Mary.
I’d click the “Recommend” button but as often seems to be the case with Seminal diaries that option does not appear to exist.
Yes.
The first step in learning how to not to be incapacitated by fear is to be willing to take a step – any step! – while feeling our fear of the unknown.
That’s the magic key that unlocks our prison and sets us free.
(And our “prison” of fear was never even locked at all. Our fear just had us too afraid to leave.)
Right now we’re collectively so scared we have only an animal response, to kill our fear – and thus kill anything that makes us afraid, whether those things are “Republicans” or “Democrats” or “Muslims” or anything else. They’re all just different forms of the unknown.
And since our new way of being, the new future that we’re so hoping to find, since that lives out there in the unknown somewhere (otherwise we’d already be living that way), when in our fear we kill the unknown we also kill everything new for which we so long and so hope.
The trick isn’t to kill fear, to wait until we’re never afraid. The trick is to learn that fear’s just another part of life, another thing we can feel and live through.
We may not actually live through the thing we choose to go out and encounter. That’s why life’s worth living. But we can live through the fear.
That’s why the seemingly sensible temptation to wait until the path is clear is guaranteed to keep us trapped exactly where we are. Our test is to see whether we can act without having to know everything first. Can we bravely take a step, see how things look from our new perspective, maybe even fall down and get back up, and do that over and over again until we get to someplace new?
It’s learning to walk.
The essential understanding isn’t how to never fall down. It’s that we’ll live through falling down and can keep going until together we reach our new home.
Keep it up, Mary. You’re being amazing.
I have, I know, made this point before and before that, but we need to change. We can use the internet to organize localities on the internet. It’s not a matter of going house to house. Get enough localities hooked up and you have a national movement.
Take FDL as an example. Various posts come and go with comments that also come and go, but it feeds our desire for individuality. We resist submerging ourselves in the group although that’s changing (i.e. a wave at a concert) Instead of successive, sometimes duplicative posts, how about a wikipedia type arrangement where instead of comments people contribute to the mother of all informative posts on say social security, health care, what we can do to change things. Rather than individual blogs we have this central clearing house for information and ideas. We use it to build on each other.
With all due respect, and I do respect you Mary, your comment which states your concerns well and which got so many positive remarks, does not suggest anything that might change things. Our choices in November are worse, not better. That’s something we should talk about. We talk the talk. Walking the walk is another matter.
I think I made the point of not knowing how to fix things and taking a step anyway. Doing things the same way is not going to work against institutions that have massive amounts of money, power, media and propaganda. I am not giving up. But I am leaving my fear behind and my support of the lesser of two evils. I reject the abuse.
Well done, Mary!
~ Edward Everett Hale
This is a very important point to keep on making. To continue your metaphor, how many abused people never walk out the door because they aren’t sure where else to go? Outside the door is better, even if you’re just standing in the front yard – you’ve taken the first step, and you’ve brought your dignity with you.
nice
I like that John. We should get together again and work for Ami Bera.
The simplicity of the ‘doing’ you suggest is lacking is obvious.
Like Arlo’s song, if one person does . . . if two people, TWO people do it, etc.
You stop doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results despite the previous attempts that tell you, it’s failing.
You. Just. Stop.
And the system is forced to adapt, change. Or fall, or fail, or adjust TO you, instead of you being compliant to the system.
If you don’t GET what Mary is saying, if you don’t GET walking away en masse, then yer not really looking for a solution, yer just perpetuating the status quo, and that’s failing most of us . . . if it’s not failing you, then yer a supporter of fewer having more, and the elimination of the middle class.
Just. Walk. Away.
The BIGGEST and simplest DOING available, and it costs nothing. Because doing the SAME thing this time, will ensure we pay the cost of losing yet more of what we once had, including our dignity and pride.
Just. Walk. Away.
System’s being challenged without one phone call, without one house to house door knock, without any internet building of regional coalitions.
Just. Walk. Away.
That’s how you beat this system, as is, aside from violent revolution which I’m against.
Just. Walk. Away. Vote local, state if there’s ANY sign of a proggy heart beating in the lineup, ignore national completely. Ignore party.
But as I have said before, even at state and even county level, the system keeps proggies out, filters them, denies them. So, the whole voting for party thing is not in our best interest.
Just. Walk. Away. Vote what you can, and don’t vote the rest.
Just. Walk. Away.
With pride.
The system will HAVE to adjust . . . and if republicans drag us under to civil war/class war so be it. Can’t fix what is, it HAS to collapse.
When you walk away, you know you’ve done what you can to break the system.
Just. Walk. Away. Focus on self, family, focus on local, do the things Mary and others always talk about (Sac John) in your neighbor hoods, be you a home owner or a cave dweller.
Starting a community garden that provides food for local residents is a huge leap forward. The synergy derived from the process alone is incredible.
Just. Walk. Away.
Absolutely beautiful Mary.
Perfection in prose.
Well done.
I hate to trying to be specific but what does walking away involve? Do you plan to vote in the next election? Go for a community garden?
I will vote in local elections. I will vote against eMeg and Carly. I will work for Ami Bera to beat Dan Lungren.
I will not wait for Obama to do the right thing. Obama has continued the neocon/neoliberal worldview. I will not vote for him again. See list above in diary.
My neighborhood already has a community garden. I am thinking about starting a site that is divided into geographic locations where people can add local goods and services, organically grown veggies, etc.
Rather than wait for the two party government to provide health care to its citizens I would like to get together with my community and start a local clinic.
I see all of these things as political acts. I am fighting against the oligarchy. I am fighting to find our democracy again.
The more we do things on a very local level the bigger and healthier our worlds get.
And like I said in the diary, I am not sure of my next step but there will be a next step.
That says it all and says it well, Mary. The Democrats don’t desrve my support and they won’t get it. I don’t know how I will be active politically but I will never support these lying, weak, cynical, abusive thugs again.
And I want the local University of California Medical Group to be forced to take medi-cal. They benefit by admitting their patients to UCD hospital that receives state funding but will not take the state insurance for poor people.
Nice one, Mary.
In my more despairing moments, I think New Zealand might be nice…
Bravo Mary.
I don’t think the pollsters — or any of the Democratic PTB — will “read the under vote.” In fact, they will positively choose to ignore it.
That’s why I suggest voting in some fashion. There ought to be SOMEONE you can vote for in that “main race,” be it Green, Peace & Freedom [showing my age], Working Families, or writing in Elizabeth Warren.
I think there needs to be a tally of votes in some other column that can be identified as “gettable,” if only the quisling Democrats had acted more “progressive.”
I’m seriously thinking of Canada.
This is an excellent post, Mary. Thank you !!
I would like to add the tendency toward constant belittlement when the victims believe their lying eyes. Too stupid to understand the real Truth.