Two Troubling Questions

Two questions go with me virtually every minute of every day and during sleepless minutes at night. One is: What can I do to make a difference in the dire direction and skewed values of my country? The other is: Why have the Democratic politicians – those we count on to get something constructive done - lost their voice? I look for answers everywhere.

In mulling the first question, the following points jump out with impressive clarity. People who have made a difference often have in common:
• They devote their energy to a single issue
• The issue may be a result of grievous personal experience
• They stay on task for decades, or for as long as they live.

Cases in point: M L King and many others/unfair treatment of black people;
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others/ women’s right to vote; Sarah & Jim Brady/gun control; Chris Reeve/spinal cord research; Cindy Sheehan/military action in Iraq. Of these examples, only one can be considered a fait accompli and its time frame is instructive. From Stanton’s demand for suffrage in 1848, it took approximately 70 years of focused, dedicated work before women finally won the right to vote in 1920! By then Stanton herself had passed from the scene in 1902. In most cases, reforms that move society forward non-violently toward more tolerance, greater enlightenment, more freedom, take a very, very long time to accomplish.

On the other hand, moving backward happens at breakneck speed. Waterkeeper Alliance says that in the last 5 years, more than 400 environmental laws have been weakened. A Democratic Congressman from Virginia says that war in Iraq is costing us $100,000 per minute! and that tax cuts for the rich cost us $200,000 per minute! Does this mean our national deficit ramps up at the rate of $300,000 per minute? How can we survive?

With so much going retrograde so fast, how does one focus on a single issue? It takes only minutes to identify at least 20 major issues that need urgently to be infused with radical energy. Aside from major issues, there are those that are still important but less overwhelmingly so, and these crop up daily. In the past week, 1) the Senate has debated an asbestos trust fund compensation which Democrats think is a Trojan horse. 2) Bush has agreed to a so-called compromise on the Patriot Act that most Senate Democrats stand ready to cave to but which is quite meaningless in terms of improved protections. 3) The current budget bill will further increase the miles between impoverishment and wealth in our country. 4) Also in the last week, AOL and Yahoo want to charge large grassroots political action groups [MoveOn, PFAW, ACLU, which are not administration friendly] a fee for sending their emails. 5) Vaccines are being gene-spliced into plant materials whose spread cannot be controlled. 6) A few weeks ago EPA announced a plan to weaken reporting standards for toxic wastes. And 7) we know from recent tragedies how lightly mine safety standards are taken.

It is impossible even to be aware of everything that is in retrograde, much less to focus on one issue. I mentioned that radical energy is needed, radical because the usual methods of political action aren’t getting the job done.

This leads to the second question plaguing me: why have Democratic politicians lost their voice? I am not clear how to analyze this one. To some extent, the answer to loss of voice is ‘because no one is listening.’ On every issue that comes before Congress, the Republican majority has already been told what to think and how to vote. They don’t want debate or to hear any other opinion. The media is mostly ho-hum on opposition arguments, presumably because those opinions are doomed. Another reason for vocal decline seems to be that some politicians would rather get along with power than rile it. How else to explain the game played by 16 Democratic Senators [not the 2 from NY fortunately] who voted yes to cloture on the Alito confirmation but no to confirmation. Who did they think they were fooling? For sure it is discouraging to be at the mercy of a non-compassionate majority which doesn’t allow Democrats to attend some so-called joint committee hearings, that adjourns conference committees so things can be changed after the Democrats have left, that does not allow Democrats to offer amendments, but jumping down a rabbit hole is not the solution.

I don’t know the solution, and I would welcome further discussion of these troubling questions.
2/15/06