We Should Be in a Rage by Charles M. Blow

[elleng]

Voter apathy is a civic abdication. There is no other way to describe it. . .

Now we hear murmuring that Republicans hold a slight advantage going into 2014, not strictly because that’s the will of the American people, but because that may well be the will of the people willing to show up at the polls.

There is an astounding paradox in it: too many of those with the least economic and cultural power don’t fully avail themselves of their political power. A vote is the great equalizer, but only when it is cast.

The strategy here is simple: Break the spirit. Muddy the waters. Make voting feel onerous and outcomes ambiguous. And make it feel like a natural outgrowth of tedium and bickering, and not a well-funded, well-designed effort. Make us subsist on personality politics rather than principled ones.

The greatest trick up the sleeves of the moneyed and powerful is their diabolical ability to render themselves invisible and undetectable, to recede and operate behind a front, one relatable and common. Our politics are overrun with characters acting at the behest of shadows. . .

Democracy is durable, but not incorruptible. The very purity of the concept invites those determined to alter it, to tilt it toward oligarchy, to slowly, imperceptibly if possible, bring it to a calamitous end.

The drift of the boat seems inconsequential until it encounters the falls.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/10/opinion/blow-we-should-be-in-a-rage.html?hp&rref=opinion

[Warpy]

1. Rage is out there, just under the surface

I am the person random strangers talk to whenever I go out and that's OK. More and more they're talking about the Republican con job about Obamacare/ACA. People are absolutely furious over all the propaganda and at least this time they're seeing it as propaganda.

I haven't felt this level of seething rage since the early 60s, when riots were about to break out because black folks had enough of being non persons.

[truedelphi]

2. Jon Stewart mentioned a few nights how back in 2012,

we were down some 8 points in terms of voter turnout.

2008 - Voter Turnout 62.5 % of registered voters

2012 - Voter Turnout 54.5% of registered voters

It will be far less than that later this year, and probably even less in 2016.

"Choosing the lesser of two evils" is a disappointing and totally non-motivating battle cry.

We have gone from a nation that was once "Give me liberty or give me death" to a nation that is
"Oh fuck it all, just pass the Doritos."

[1StrongBlackMan]

3. Although I understand the concept of ...

picking the lesser of two evils ... hell, I do it everyday, in any number of life choices where I'd rather not pick either (or any) of the choices available to me; but choose, I must.

But I cannot understand DEMOCRATS resting in this false narrative ... How can one be aligned with the Party that has accomplished so much over the past 6 years, including the end of DADT, Lily Ledbetter, the ACA, and on and on, be seen as "evil", even if/when it proposed a CCPI (that did not even come up for a vote), and is indecisive on a XL Pipeline, and is currently negotiating a trade deal in secret.

Because I disagree with some of the things the Party has done/is contemplating doing/might do in the future doesn't erase the positive that that Party has done ... and that Positive damn sure takes that Party out of the "evil" category.

[truedelphi]

5. Here is a hint as to evil: The F***ers gave it all to the banks

When Bush was leaving office, there were two to three million Americans who were facing foreclosure. Under Obama, an additional nine to ten millions of households were foreclosed on. This despite the 50 billions of dollars he put into HAMP.

Not only that, but the criminals at the top of the financial system are still there. You serve more time for getting caught with a joint in your pocket while on the streets of DC, (47 days) than you do for destroying our economy.

I can never forget that Obama is the person who chooses the economic appointments that secretly run the government.

Show me the video, or at least offer up a quote that demonstrates that the Republicans made him choose Geithner, reappoint Bernanke, and put slimeball Eric Holder in charge of the Justice Department.

Who is Eric Holder? Start googling Matt Taibbi and read up on his economic articles. Holder is the person in charge of seeing to it that Marc Rich was pardoned, and that one pardon let the Big Financial people know that Enron-izing our entire country was A-okay. The Vampire Squid article by Taibbi, published in Rolling Stone, was amazing in digging out who Holder is.

People complain about the policies of Ron Reagan. But Obama's economic people have created policies that are Reagan's policies on steroids, and without eh regulations or stipulations that exist.

In my state, California, the Obama deportations have been devastating to the south of the border community. (These mass deportations barely made the headlines.)

So have the economic polices of Geithner. Because he refused to loan Schwartzenegger the money needed, the state budget has been slashed. We currently have a "surplus" situation, but mostly because everything has been slashed. And that is including the part of the budget that would have kept clinics up and running, so the ACA will be having a tough time delivering health care, as clinics are under staffed or non-existent. My school district, which had 15 million plus for its annual use circa 2009, now has under ten million.

And not only that, the marijuana dispensaries have been closed. A lot of people will be packing up and moving to Colorado. This is totally a shame because we were the forerunners of the de-criminalizing movement.

I am tabling locally on a very local issue. And people are now saying, "Boy I really felt excitement in 2008. But not now." Then they offer up a disgusted look, and they leave the area before I can even address the issue I am out on the streets about.

The only hope I see is some kind of Presidential ticket with Warren at the head. But then I doubt she would even survive, physically.

[1StrongBlackMan]

6. And ...

The only hope I see is some kind of Presidential ticket with Warren at the head.

If you do, I suspect you will be similarly out-raged, as even the Great EW will be similarly criticized when it becomes clear that the Presidency is not a Senator's seat.

[fasttense]

4. Mr. Blow is wrong.

He writes: "A vote is the great equalizer, but only when it is cast."

Actually, a vote is a great equalizer, but only when it is counted."

I called to get voter turn out during the last election and got at least 12 people telling me that it didn't matter because their vote wouldn't be counted accurately any way. Now 12 is not a lot but these were the ones talking about it. "So, what have the Democrats done to ensure our votes are counted?" was another question I got.

Add to that the push by RepubliCONS to keep Democratic voters from the polls and the seriously RepubliCON-like performance of Obama and you have liberals staying away in droves. What did they expect when the leader of the Democratic party announced to the world that he really was a moderate RepubliCON?

It seems to me the Democrats want liberals to stay away from the polls.