CSotD: Okay, yes. But now what?
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Interesting cartoon by Steve Kelley, for several reasons.
Kelley skews right of center, but he's not out at the edge. The true right-wingers, by contrast, have been parading Obama's low approval ratings but absolutely silent about the abysmal numbers the GOP has been getting in polls.
The "approval ratings" story is that voters are angry with everyone, and to report on one aspect and not the spectrum is simply dishonest. However, if you scan the political cartoons for the past week or two, you'll find not just a "significant disparity" in commentary about Obama's ratings versus the GOP's or Boehner's, but a virtual monopoly on the former topic.
Kelley at least covers the overall beating Congress is taking, but what I find compelling about his cartoon is that it leaves me imbalanced between agreeing that voters have made some dumb choices and not wanting to blame the victims.
Kelley is absolutely right, that is, in suggesting that the solution to discontent in a democracy is to vote the rascals out.
But when you consider the impact of Citizens United combined with voter-suppression moves and some spectacular examples of gerrymandering, "voting the rascals out" isn't as simple in practice as it is in theory.
The rascals have built themselves a pretty secure fortress, to the point where the Norman Rockwell popular image of election day seems pretty far-fetched, or at least terribly out-of-date.
So, yes, he's right. We need to vote the rascals out.
But you can't rely upon — much less blame — the voters entirely until you fix the system.
Something needs to be done. And it needs to be done, not with pitchforks and torches, but with shoe leather and clipboards. If people are genuinely this unhappy, their discontent needs to be gathered and directed, not simply announced.
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert rallied nearly a quarter-million people to announce their discontent with how things have been going. That was over three years ago. Seen any impact?
If people are genuinely this unhappy, their discontent needs to be gathered and directed, not simply announced.
As it happens, I just had a substantive political conversation with my sons over the holidays that left me with a lot to ponder and I hope them as well. One of the things that emerged was my growing resentment over the incredibly ahistoric mythology that has built up around the Sixties.
Every generation goes through this move from history to mythology and the newspaper editor in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" isn't the only believer in tearing up the truth in order to preserve the legend.
We used to roll on the floor and laugh at the attempts by TIME and Newsweek to report on what was happening, or seethe over the idiotic misrepresentations on TV sitcoms and the hostile jokes of Bob Hope, but they are now the historic record for the vast majority of people.
No wonder the Milennials think we're idiots. They believe in hippies.
Hippies died early. Hippies came and went in one neighborhood in the course of a year. If someone uses the term "hippie," it's a tell: You should realize immediately that they have no idea at all what they're talking about.
I guess we should have made it more clear.
At this moment of national crisis, however, what I find particularly counterproductive is that people remember the demonstrations but not the voter registration drives, the setting up of free clinics and legal aid storefronts, and other examples of truly grassroots social outreach that were the actual mechanisms of change.
The demonstrations were the pep rallies, they weren't the games.
And it's also forgotten that, while the charismatic preacher, Martin Luther King, made a great figurehead for the Civil Rights Movement — the template for the antiwar movement that followed — the shoe leather had been being invested for decades before, and giants like James Farmer and Thurgood Marshall as well as activist students like young John Lewis were plowing and fertilizing the fields that King's charisma would make bountiful.
Also forgotten is that the initial demonstrations were "demonstrations" and not provocations.
In fact — as John Lewis recalls in the recent graphic memoir, "March: Book One" — not only were the civil rights demonstrations far from "come one, come all" mass rallies, but there was extensive planning and training to make sure the people who participated in demonstrations were schooled and disciplined in nonviolence.
So, with that in mind, I agree with Steve Kelley that, if Congress is not pleasing the people, it is up to the people to turn it around.
But, with that in mind, I do not believe it will happen either through trusting the process as it now exists, or by shouting in the streets for it to be fixed.
Nor do I believe if we just sit and watch quietly, that it will fix itself.
Meanwhile, the news isn't all bad. I want to see more of this.
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